President Trump on Wednesday floated the idea of another new name for a major body of water, asking on Truth Social whether the Strait of Hormuz should be renamed after him in light of recent developments in the Iran war. The suggestion follows his moves to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.
“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” the president wrote. “Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!”
The official White House X account then shared Trump’s quote above a map altered to read “Trump Strait” in reference to the vital waterway along Iran’s southern coastline that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the globe.
“It’s got a nice ring to it,” the White House quipped.
Before the war, one-fifth of the world’s oil flowed through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran quickly began using its ability to choke off that supply as leverage over the U.S. and has largely stuck to that strategy ever since.
As a result, pre-Labor Day gas prices across the U.S. are approaching 14-year highs.
A pattern emerges
This is not the first time Trump has shown interest in renaming the Strait of Hormuz. In March, he jokingly referred to it as the “Strait of Trump” during a speech in Miami.
Iran has to “open up the Strait of Trump — I mean, Hormuz,” the president said to laughter. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake.”
And last month he went a step further, telling a New York audience that “pretty soon, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”
In response, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi insisted that the strait “cannot be seized with a tweet, nor with an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor through an election speech.”
“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian,” Gharibabadi wrote on social media. “This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command.”
Why does Trump keep bringing this up?
Trump has a history of renaming things, regardless of whether those names stick. He has directed his administration to change the name of Alaska’s Denali back to Mount McKinley, and to use the “Department of War” as the secondary title for the Department of Defense.
In Washington, D.C., Trump’s allies put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — a move reversed in May by a federal judge. Today, more than a dozen other initiatives — completed or in development — feature the president’s name, image or likeness, including currency, passports and an airport.
As for the Strait of Hormuz, it has become a major focus of the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, with hostilities increasing since the latest round of peace talks broke down in July. The U.S. is maintaining a naval blockade against Iranian ports while attempting to escort other ships through the strait. Meanwhile, “unknown projectiles” have been fired at tankers as they transit — incidents that U.S. Central Command has characterized as “attempted attacks by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] against commercial shipping.” Both sides, in turn, have spent the last few days retaliating against regional military targets for the first time in more than a month.
Against this backdrop, Trump has repeatedly claimed that America has “almost total control of the Hormuz Strait” — a claim echoed by his “Trump Strait” comments.
Yet the reality is more complicated. The New York Times reported that only “five ships passed through the strait on Monday, the lowest level since early May.” Before the war, that number usually exceeded 130. Many shipping companies say the situation remains too dangerous to resume regular trade in the region — especially now that periodic “tit for tat” strikes are likely to be the “new normal,” Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Times.
It’s not going to be a “black and white situation in which there’s a total cease-fire or the Strait of Hormuz is totally open,” Froman explained.
Is ‘Trump Strait’ the new Lake America?
No. When Trump moved last week to rechristen Lake Ontario amid his trade war with Canada, he issued an executive order directing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “take all appropriate actions to rename as ‘Lake America’ the body of water currently named as Lake Ontario.”
What this means, in practice, is that the federal government will start to call Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The Geographic Names Information System — a database of name and location information for more than 2 million physical and cultural features of the U.S. — will be updated, and all “executive department and agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications” will now reflect Trump’s preferred naming, according to the order.
Whether any other country, company or person follows suit is essentially up to them. But the U.S. president has no similar mechanism for renaming an international waterway bordered by Iran and Oman. Likewise, a single country cannot legally annex or claim sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, where international law protects navigational rights even as Iran and Oman exercise sovereignty over their respective territorial waters.
