Shelved plan to rename Atlantic after Sundar Pichai's no: Donald Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he had considered renaming the Atlantic Ocean but dropped the idea after Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to Trump, warned that the move could upset many countries.

Addressing a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, Trump appeared to suggest that his move to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America had encouraged him to consider renaming the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean.

"Recently, I changed the name of a lake, you know the lake. But I did it very lightly. And the damn thing got changed, actually. That's power, right? When you sort of do it half-heartedly, and it gets changed, it's changed. It's called the Lake of America," he said.


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Trump said he shared his idea of changing the name of the Atlantic Ocean with Pichai, the Indian-American CEO of Google.

"I spoke to a brilliant guy, Sundar. He heads all of Google. He's a brilliant guy. Sergei and Sundar. Totally brilliant guys," he said in an apparent reference to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google.

"And, you know, they're still rattled from the Gulf. And I said, 'Sundar, I'm thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?'" Trump told the gathering, referring to his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

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Recounting Pichai's response, Trump said the Google CEO had told him that oceans were different because they covered many countries and asked him not to pursue the idea.

"So, I'll probably pass it," Trump said.