Hydronyms just one way countries vent frustration

“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

U.S. President Donald Trump finally cracked the code on international diplomacy, trade wars and cartography by signing an executive order on Thursday to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

And the rationale behind this sudden act of geographical manifest destiny?

A spiralling trade war with Canada, a belligerent war of words between Ontario Premier Doug Ford and U.S. officials, and the claim that Washington no longer expects to do much business with the province of Ontario going forward.

Naturally, we Canadians have responded with our most devastating national defence mechanism: an absolute chorus of collective eye-rolls and a rolling commentary of indignant social media rants.

Even our equable Prime Minister Mark Carney decided to take dig at the U.S. president’s ill-informed decision on Thursday by explaining to our allies that the name Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old, and dates back before both the Canadian Confederation and the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

“We know that the United States is changing. Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney said. “Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario — today and forever.”

Seriously? Hydronyms? Trying to confuse them, are we?

Of course, Canadians are equal parts bemused and irritated at Trump’s childish behaviour. All he has done is further sully his government’s reputation in the eyes of the world, much like his similarly deluded executive order last year when he thought it amusing to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

No thoughtful person outside the United States is about to begin referring to the Gulf of America or Lake America anytime soon.

But just in case you thought this puerile action was strictly a Trump manoeuvre, he’s hardly the first world leader to use rebranding as a tool to express their geopolitical frustration.

Remember the decision to rename french fries as “freedom fries” during the U.S. invasion of Iraq? According to Wikipedia, the freedom fries craze was a politically motivated renaming coined in February 2003 in a North Carolina restaurant, which was then picked up by the U.S. Congress, which pushed for House cafeterias to change French fries and French toast to freedom fries and freedom toast.

These changes were fuelled by American resentment of France, which opposed the Iraq war following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaida and the declaration of a “war on terror” by then-president George W. Bush. France made it clear that it would neither support nor participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and further, that it would veto any resolution that mandated such a decision to the United Nations Security Council.

As such, France was seen as the main barrier to securing a UN mandate for invasion, and it ignited anti-French sentiments among patriotic Americans who accused France of betrayal.

Never mind the fact that french fries originated in Belgium.

Before the Iraq war, there was the First World War, when a wave of anti-German sentiment swept the United States. Rather than refusing to eat popular German foods of the era, Americans simply slapped on a patriotic prefix. Sauerkraut became liberty cabbage and hamburgers became liberty steak. Even medical conditions weren’t safe from the patriotic rebranding, as outbreaks of German measles were dubbed liberty measles in U.S. newspapers.

Yet the U.S. is hardly the only guilty country.

In the wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, major fast-food chains like Burger King in Russia replaced “Americano” coffee as it was named on their menus with Russiano, after Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev joked in 2016 that ordering an “Americano” coffee was not politically correct.

Of course, CBC reported last year that a few Canadian coffee shops did much the same last year in the middle of rising tensions between Canada and the United States, changing the name of the Americano to the “Canadiano.”

In reality, changing the name of a lake does not change the lake. Lake Ontario is still the same beautiful body of water that it always was. The only thing that has changed is the increasing arrogance of our southern neighbours, who seem determined to forget that overly conceited governments, much like poorly timed hydronyms, don’t last forever.

» Matt Goerzen, editor