Should we call it Lake America or Lake Ontario?

What’s in a name? These days quite a lot, it seems.Since President Trump issued his Executive Order declaring that the body of water conventionally known as Lake Ontario would henceforth be named “Lake America,” we’ve seen surprisingly impassioned demonstrations of both support and opposition — and not just from Canadians.These responses were interesting on two counts.

First, because some of the same people who had mocked or decried the renaming of old places on the basis of contemporary ideologies were now happy to follow suit for their own political reasons.And also, because those who had formerly nodded along as monuments fell to trendy political movements were now shocked and appalled to realize someone less congenial might do the same.Granted, names have always had a certain intrinsic importance.

Arkansas, for example, has an official state law specifying that its name must be pronounced “Arkansaw” rather than “Ar-Kansas” — passed by General Assembly in 1881.(Growing up, there were rumors regarding the cruel and bizarre penalties applied to violators.) And this is without getting into the endless foreign disputes over the correct application of “Macedonia” or the “British Isles.”But within the past few years the obsession with names and changing them has escalated.

For some time now, contemporary progressives operating on Red Guard lite-mode have gladly sacrificed traditional names — not to say statues and institutions — to their ideological passions.Canadians themselves cannot exactly stand on principle here: Toronto’s central Dundas Square was recently renamed to “Sankofa Square,” for reasons no one quite seems to understand.Across the city, those looking for Woodsy Park will instead find Ethennonnhawahstihnen’ Park.

If you held a gun to the heads of nearby residents and demanded they correctly pronounce this, you would almost certainly end up with a lot of bodies. President Trump by contrast has kept things simple...