The short answer
“Lake Pennsylvania” is the name Pennsylvania State Rep. David Maloney wants federal officials to consider for Lake Erie. On September 9, 2026, he circulated a Pennsylvania House co-sponsorship memo saying he intends to introduce a resolution urging the President, Congress and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to take the steps necessary to rename the lake.
Why Lake Pennsylvania?
Maloney’s argument is built around Pennsylvania’s relationship with its only Great Lake. He points to Erie County tourism, Presque Isle, boating and fishing, and says Pennsylvania contributes heavily to maintaining the recreational fishery.
His memo says Pennsylvania stocked nearly 500,000 yearling steelhead in 2025 — about 40% of the lake-wide total — and supplied all of the brown trout stocked into the lake that year.
What would the resolution actually do?
If introduced and adopted, the resolution would urge federal officials to begin a renaming process. It would not, by itself, change the federal name of Lake Erie.
The proposal specifically calls on the President, Congress and the Secretary of the Interior, which is a clue that even its sponsor is treating this as a federal naming question rather than something Pennsylvania can accomplish alone.
Why now?
The proposal comes shortly after the U.S. federal government ordered Lake Ontario renamed “Lake America” for federal use. The timing has naturally invited comparisons between the two Great Lakes naming stories.
— Rep. David Maloney’s Sept. 9 co-sponsorship memo