Republican lawmaker wants to rename Lake Erie: ‘Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania’

A Republican congressman from Pennsylvania is planning to put a resolution before the U.S. House of Representatives urging President Donald Trump, Congress and the United States Secretary of the Interior to rename Lake Erie as “Lake Pennsylvania.”

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The reasoning behind the name change derives from the lake’s modern identity, David Maloney said in a press release issued by his office on Sept. 8.

“Every summer, Pennsylvanians head toward the lake … with boats, fishing gear and families in tow,” Maloney said. They spend the weekend on Pennsylvania’s Great Lake shoreline, he added, noting that the area attracts millions of visitors annually.

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The release states that about 74 per cent of surveyed anglers reside in Pennsylvania, travelling an average of 103 miles to reach the water, along with out-of-state visitors coming from New York and Ohio to access Erie County’s “Steelhead Alley.”

Despite having a small share of the lake’s shoreline, according to the release, Pennsylvania stocked nearly 500,000 yearling steelhead in 2025 — approximately 40 per cent of all steelhead stocked and more than any other state or Canadian province. It also noted that Pennsylvania supplied all the brown trout stocked in the lake in 2025.

“This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake. Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families and tourists who come to enjoy it,” Maloney said. “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others.”

But Pennsylvania only has one, said Maloney, advocating: “Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!”

Of the four states that border the lake, Pennsylvania’s shoreline is the second smallest behind Ohio and New York. Only Michigan’s is shorter.

Lake Erie first appeared on French colonial maps in the mid-1600s, according to the PBS station in Erie, Pennsylvania. Erie is a shortened form of “Erielhonan,” named after the Erielhonan Indigenous people who inhabited the lake’s southern shores.

The proposal comes in the wake of Trump’s changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in August.

Prior to that, in January 2025, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. He also ordered that Mount Denali in Alaska revert to its previous name, Mount McKinley (named for William McKinley, a previous president who favoured the use of tariffs). Former President Barack Obama changed the name to Denali in 2015 to reflect Alaskan Indigenous traditions and the preference of many Alaska residents. 

As with Lake Ontario, U.S. government approval of a name change would only apply within the U.S. Canada has its own geographical naming authorities and would not have to recognize the name change.

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