It could be a joke, or just as easily, another eccentric idea from the billionaire who recently joined the new Trump Administration.
“A new name for the waters separating England and France,” Musk wrote in the post, which quickly went viral.
The new name he suggests is The George Washington Channel, named after the first president of the United States.
More than 5 million users viewed the post within two hours.
At the time of writing this article, the post had over 82 million views.
The post sparked a wave of reactions and heated debates, largely because the seriousness of the proposal remains unclear.
Not everyone supports the new name
Many comments are far from favorable toward Musk, Trump, or even America itself.
One user remarks that Americans should respect countries with history and culture while pursuing their own national goals, reminding Musk of the importance of allies.
Another user expresses concern, comparing Trump’s attempts to rename places and redraw maps to historical instances of authoritarian leaders seeking to reclaim past glory.
A third user comments that the true owners of America are its Indigenous people and highlights the irony of immigration policies being tightened by a nation built on immigration.
Musk’s post came as part of a larger context.
Amid the flurry of executive orders signed on his first day in office, Donald Trump also signed orders to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali in Alaska.
The Gulf of Mexico is set to be renamed the Gulf of America.
Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, will revert to its former name, Mount McKinley, as it was known before Barack Obama changed it in 2015.
In response, a Russian lawmaker proposed renaming the Black Sea to the “Russian Sea.”
Unsurprisingly, the suggestion never moved beyond the proposal stage.
