Just when you thought Trump’s popularity couldn’t sink any lower, and our country’s reputation on the international stage could not be more besmirched, along comes our toddler-in-chief deciding that all the toys are his again, and just to make sure everyone knows that, he’s signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, which sounds every bit as idiotic as he is.
Of course, he did this on a whim, because he loves to rage bait all of us, and his favorite game at the moment (until he finds something else bright and shiny to distract him) is to destroy our alliance with Canada. Canada! Our dear friends to the North, with whom we share the longest border in the world. We’ve had our differences, yes, but no serious deal-breaking disputes since the War of 1812. And then along comes this apricot a$$hole, proving that he’s the greatest gasbag this country has ever belched forth, and he manages to plunge US/Canada relations into an unprecedented abyss. And for no good reason that anyone can discern, not unlike the current war with Iran.
This, of course, is not the first time he has engaged in this type of childish political theater in an effort to distract us from things like, oh, I don’t know…
He also did it with the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s astounding how quickly people just succumbed to that whim. You’d think that people would understand that once you allow a dog to pee on the furniture, all bets are off. But no.
At the same time he changed the name of our beloved gulf to the Gulf of America, he quietly declared that our country’s highest peak, Denali, was going to have its name reverted back to Mount McKinley. Alaska didn’t want this. The native tribes of Alaska certainly didn’t, either.
And now he’s “joking about renaming the state of New Mexico. He thinks “New America” has a nice ring to it. But he’ll have a much harder time pulling that off, because he’ll also have a state government to contend with.
But when has the Crusty Old Combover cared about anyone’s opinion other than his own? It was just another way for him to mark his territory and show who is boss.
And check out this particularly petty, racist move: President Biden was finally successful in removing Confederate names off 8 military installations. Of course, Trump wouldn’t stand for that. But he knew he couldn’t have them reinstated without cooperation from Congress, so instead, he chose other military personnel with the same last names as the confederates, and named the installations after them, instead.
For example, Fort Bragg, which used to be named after slave owner and incompetent and very unpopular Confederate General Braxton Bragg, is now named after Private First Class Roland L.Bragg. Now, from what I can tell, this man led a pretty stand up life, and did some exemplary things prior to his death in 1999, but if you want evidence that he’s being used as a political pawn in this instance, all you have to do is know that his family had absolutely no idea about the name change until the day it was announced to the public, when a reporter called them to ask their opinion. If the change had truly been done to honor the man, his family would have been part of the ceremony, don’t you think? But no. This was just a sneaky way to have the name converted back to Fort Bragg. And this petty act cost the taxpayers 8 million dollars.
Trump also “unofficially” renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. Technically, it’s still the Department of Defense, because he couldn’t get away with an official change, but when’s the last time you’ve heard the government call it that? Because as all little boys do, Trump wants to look tough. He wants to play soldier, now that he has his office and his authority to hide behind, rather than just a few fake bone spurs. Yes, insisting you have a “Department of War” is a great way to maintain decent diplomatic relations around the world. Someone get the man some plastic green soldiers to play with. Please, before more people get hurt.
And as I’m sure I’ve made quite clear, I’m biased regarding our president, who I view to be an inflamed abscess on the butt of humanity, but believe it or not, that, and his rage baiting and his political theatrics are not why all these name changes are so outrageous. If anyone went about them the way he has, regardless of party, it would be shocking, because there is a process when it comes to changing the names of things. They don’t usually come about due to some deranged man’s ill-considered whim.
One way that names get changed is through acts of Congress. If the men and women we have elected to represent us pass legislation, and the president signs it, or Congress overrides a veto, the name change becomes law. And as we all know, especially if you’ve listened to Schoolhouse Rock, the road to becoming a law is a long and complicated one.
The other way that names get changes, at least when it comes to geographic features such as mountains, lakes, and gulfs, is by starting with the US Board on Geographic Names (BGN). Their job is to establish uniform geographic name usage throughout the federal government. It’s been around since 1890.
First, they get the proposal, and then they research it to see if there are any other existing names, if there’s valid historical evidence for the name, if there’s local usage for it, and if it would cause any confusion. Next, they actually ask for public opinion. (Imagine that!) They solicit opinion from citizens as well as state, county, and municipal governments, federal land-management agencies, tribal governments and any other stakeholders. They take the tribal consultation aspect very seriously, especially in culturally significant locations. Next, they vote on the name, and the official name enters the federal geographic name database and the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), and federal agencies then use this standardized name.
That process can take months. It’s not something that is conceived and achieved at 4 am during a rant on Truth Social. It’s taken seriously. It’s not done haphazardly, and we, the people, have the opportunity to weigh in. It’s a lengthy, cumbersome process, but that’s how democracies work.
And yet, here Trump’s governmental toadies go, hopping to and fro, making sweeping changes based on the caprice of a man in the throes of dementia who did not even earn the popular vote. That’s the stuff of authoritarian regimes. And that leads me to the bottom (at least so far) of this slippery slope
Toponymic Narcissism
Now, to be fair, this type of narcissism does not have its own section in the DSM-5, but it makes a lot of sense when you consider it. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, toponyms are place names, so toponymic narcissism is the obsessive desire for self-aggrandizement through place naming. I think of it as a way that a little boy can write his signature on something with his urine stream, only his urine is indelible, and his signature is often 10 feet high and several stories up.
Trump’s desire for self-aggrandizement knows no bounds. Not only has he thrown his name on various buildings throughout the world, but he also slapped his face on the national parks pass, declared his birthday as another National Park fee-free day, had the US Mint create a $1 Trump coin and a 24-karat gold Trump coin, and his signature will be appearing on our paper money along side the Treasury Secretary’s, the first time in history that a president has had the audacity to do that. During our visit to DC, we saw his face on banners on many of the federal buildings, which reminded me of what happened in Nazi Germany. He tried to get Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport named after him, but failed, but he hasn’t given up yet.
In addition, we’re now stuck with TrumpRx and Trump Accounts, and the Navy is planning Trump-class battleships.
And before you get all righteously indignant, Obamacare is just a nickname, and Obama didn’t come up with it himself, nor did he insist on it. And the buildings and memorials for past presidents, save for presidential libraries as per tradition, have generally been named posthumously.
While many of us had probably never heard of Toponymic Narcissism until recently if at all, it’s not a new phenomenon by any means. Often, it is not employed by the narcissist himself, but by the people around him, to keep him happy, because toxic narcissists are scary, scary people.
For example, the town of Mussolinia di Sardegna was named after Mussolini in 1930. (After Fascism fell, it was renamed Arborea). There was also a planned/partially developed Mussolinia di Sicilia. His regime made personal commemoration part of the Fascist landscape.
In 1936, Santo Domingo was renamed Ciudad Trujillo (“Trujillo City”) in honor of dictator Rafael Trujillo. After his assassination in 1961, it reverted to Santo Domingo. This is one of the clearest examples of a ruler turning a major national city into a monument to himself, although technically, it was carried out by subordinates.
Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad in 1925, honoring Joseph Stalin. Other places across the Soviet bloc also acquired Stalin-derived names, including Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), Stalino (now Donetsk), and Stalinogorsk (now Novomoskovsk). Many were stripped of Stalin’s name during de-Stalinization after his death.
Although we may not be as familiar with him in the West, perhaps the most extravagant modern political cult of personality was that of Saparmurat Niyazov (“Turkmenbashi”) He became the leader of Turkmenistan from the time the Soviet Republic crumbled in 1990 to his death in 2006. I really should write a blog post about this guy, because he was a real piece of work. He put his people through a great deal of insanity. But for the purposes of this post, He had the port city Krasnovodsk renamed Türkmenbaşy—his official title, meaning roughly “Leader of the Turkmen.” Numerous institutions and landmarks were also named for him, and he even renamed months of the calendar after himself and members of his family.
And holy cow, let’s talk about Alexander the Great who created the Macedonian Empire, one of the largest empires in history, which consisted of mainland Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and much of Central and South Asia. As he conquered various areas, and spread his DNA everywhere, he named many of the settlements, you guessed it: Alexandria. The most well known one that still exists today is in Egypt.
An image just popped into my head, and I have to thank ChatGPT for helping me create it. It’s of little boy Trump, walking down a snowy sidewalk in Queens one day, and suddenly he spots a stray dog peeing on a fire hydrant. Now, this is a child who is devoid of compassion, so he doesn’t think, “What a cute dog. I wonder if Mommy would let me keep him.” No. He sees the dog as competition. Not to be outdone, he decides that no one gets to mark territory in his neighborhood! So he decides to do some marking of his own. And that inspires him. And now, decades later, after his need to prove that he’s worthy has grown even more intense even as he has proven himself to be increasingly pathetic, we have the freakin’ Lake of America. Lucky us.
What will he try to rename next? The moon? I hope not. That would suck the romance right out of the sky.
Toponymic Narcissism: The gift that keeps on giving.
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