Washington: US President Donald Trump has said he spoke to Indian-American Google CEO Sundar Pichai about renaming the Atlantic Ocean on Google Maps, but was told that oceans were different because they “cover a lot of countries”, as he riffed at a midterm rally in South Carolina about renaming the Gulf of Mexico and the Strait of Hormuz.
“So we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean, and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the lake,” Trump told supporters at Clemson on Wednesday evening.
“And 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, apparently referring to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “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 said, recounting that Pichai replied: “Ocean’s a difference, sir. You know, they cover a lot of… They cover really a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
“So I’ll probably pass. Should I pass? I think let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean, right?” Trump said, before turning to the Pacific: “We’re going to call it the American Ocean. How do you think Europe would fit?”
Trump said the only oceans he would consider were the Atlantic and the Pacific. “I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean, but these two,” he said.
Minutes earlier, speaking about the war with Iran, Trump said: “We have a blockade on the Trump Strait. I call it the Trump Strait. How do you think the Arabs would like to be calling it?”
“I mean, we changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Why can’t we change this…” he said.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which a large share of the world’s seaborne oil passes, has been at the centre of US-Iran tensions. Trump told the rally that the US had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity with Operation Midnight Hammer” and “Operation Epic Fury”, and that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”. He also said oil prices “will soon plummet”.
Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America by executive order shortly after taking office in January 2025, and Google Maps began displaying the new name for US users weeks later. He told the rally he had also recently renamed a lake “Lake America”.
Pichai, born in Chennai, has met Trump several times. He attended Trump’s January 2025 inauguration along with other tech leaders and was among the executives at a White House dinner for technology CEOs in September 2025, where he discussed Google’s US investments. Trump has also hosted other Indian-American tech chiefs, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, at the White House.
The rally had its lighter moments. Trump said First Lady Melania Trump “also hates me dancing”, adding that she had told him: “Darling, please, don’t dance. You’re the President of the United States. It’s not presidential.”
Earlier, after a heckler was removed, Trump praised a supporter who appeared to punch the man. “Who is the guy that threw that punch?” he asked. “It takes courage to do that in a Trump rally. He got whacked.”
The rally, at Clemson’s T. Ed Garrison Arena, was part of Trump’s campaigning ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.
(IANS)
