Lake Erie gets a new name: Meet the ‘Gulf of Cleveland’

Cleveland City HallCouncilman Kris Harsh presents his idea of renaming a portion of Lake Erie to the Gulf of Cleveland.special to cleveland.comCLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland has finally addressed one of the more pressing problems facing the city: Lake Erie’s name.It’s the Gulf of Cleveland now. Or at least it is if Cleveland City Council has anything to say about it.Council on Monday passed a resolution claiming a two-mile-wide swath of Lake Erie along the city’s shoreline and rechristening it the “Gulf of Cleveland,” apparently deciding that President Donald Trump shouldn’t have all the fun when it comes to redrawing maps with a Sharpie.“For too long in this country, we have bent the knee to the past … allowing dead men to name all of our stuff,” Harsh said during the meeting. “But we don’t serve dead people in Cleveland. We serve living people, and the time is now to claim our birthright.”The legislation directs city departments to use the new name on city-generated maps and documents and calls for the city to notify state and federal officials and major map companies, including Apple and Google.“I do expect Google and Apple to recognize our sovereignty and show it as the Gulf of Cleveland on all maps… ,” Harsh said. “Words don’t matter, but the whims of powerful white men like me do.”The tongue-in-cheek resolution, sponsored by Ward 4 Councilman Kris Harsh, follows Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario as Lake America — and comes amid the president’s latest proposal to turn New Mexico into New America.Harsh said Trump’s changes inspired Cleveland to get into the renaming business, crediting the idea Monday to “our dear orange leader in D.C.” whom he described as “a man who clearly isn’t afraid to say what no one is thinking.”He also stressed the urgency, warning that Pennsylvania — where “a very real person” wants to rename it the Lake of Pennsylvania — could beat Ohio to the punch.“We cannot, as Ohioans, let the Pennsylvanians get a jump on us,” Harsh said. “It’s our lake.”The resolution grounds the name in local history, noting its connection to Moses Cleaveland, who founded the city in 1796 and arrived by boat at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River after traversing the water immediately north of the city’s current borders.Harsh on Monday said “it’s much better to name things after dead guys than let dead guys name things,” praising the city’s founder as a “bipartisan” man who “knew how to part waters and Clevelands.”For all his enthusiausm, Harsh also anticipated an obvious objection: Lake Erie is a lake, not a gulf.“I say, who cares?” he said. Holding up a map he had made himself, he said, “This is all it takes, OK? You watch YouTube. It’s now the Gulf of Cleveland.” The resolution also makes a tourism pitch, noting that “nothing is more important than branding.” Harsh took that idea a little further, suggesting the change could be good for tourism because, as he put it, people like to vacation in gulfs. He floated a lakeside golf course so residents could “golf in the gulf,” or perhaps even drive golf balls literally into the gulf.He closed on a note for the schoolchildren and the new challenge created for students trying to remember the Great Lakes. The mnemonic for the Great Lakes, once HOMES, had already curdled into “SHAME” after Lake Ontario’s makeover. With Superior, Cleveland, Huron, America and Michigan, Harsh calculated, it now spells “SCHAM” — “a German word, and you can look it up.”The resolution says the renaming is an emergency measure and would take effect immediately upon adoption and the mayor’s approval.It also acknowledges a limitation: Just as Trump’s federal renaming orders apply to the federal government, Cleveland’s resolution can require Cleveland’s government to use “Gulf of Cleveland,” but cannot by itself rename Lake Erie for everyone else.That did not stop Harsh from ending his remarks with a call to action.“Join me in saluting the Gulf of Cleveland on your way home tonight,” he said.Hannah Drown is the Cleveland City Hall reporter for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. Since joining cleveland.com in 2014, she has worked on a wide range of beats, from breaking news and a gluten-free...This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff.