Melvin Durai
US President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order instructing US federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario, which sits between America and Canada, as “Lake America.” He did this following a trade dispute with Canada, his way of antagonising Canadians. They should be relieved, however, that he did not try to rename Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, as “Lake Trump.” Trump, after all, loves putting his name on anything and everything. Well, perhaps not everything. I’m sure he wouldn’t be thrilled to see the “Donald J. Trump Waste Disposal Center.” Most people want to be remembered after they’re gone — and one way to achieve this is to leave your name on a building.
All you need to do is fi nd a prominent building and visit it in the middle of the night with a ladder and a can of paint. If you do a good job, the people who live or work in the building may assume that you did something special to have the building named after you. Wealthy people can easily get their names on buildings, just by owning a building themselves or donating money to an organization that owns a building. Universities are full of buildings and many of them carry the names of their benefactors. For example, Anuradha and Vikas Sinha recently donated 20 million dollars to the University of North Texas (UNT) to establish the Anuradha and Vikas Sinha College of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics. It may seem egotistical to require a building to be named after you in order to make a large donation, but it’s a good way for institutions and organizations to raise money.
Not everyone expects their name to be promoted — many people donate money without expecting anything in return. But if someone wants to give me 20 million dollars, I’ll be happy to name everything I own after them: my house, my car, even my dog. Making a large donation isn’t the only way to get your name on a building. If you do something great, perhaps reaching the top of your field, there’s a chance that you’ll be honoured with a naming of some sort. It might be a building, but it could also be an airport, a park or a road. Mahatma Gandhi’s name appears on countless universities, schools, buildings and streets. He didn’t have to make a large donation. All he had to do was free India. While there’s no shortage of people who’d love to see their names on buildings, perhaps only a handful in the entire world can match the unabashed desire of Trump to see his name on as many edifices as possible. His business ventures have given him a dozen Trump Towers around the world, including in Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune, as well as several other apartment buildings and hotels that carry his name. In New York City alone, there’s the Trump Building, Trump Palace Condominiums, Trump Parc and Trump Parc East, Trump Park Avenue and Trump World Tower.
More than a dozen golf courses around the world are also named after him. Is Trump satisfied with this? No, he wants to put his name on many more buildings, even buildings that are already named for other people. He is adamant about having the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. be renamed the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Perhaps one day he’ll even ask UNT to do a renaming, enrolling students in the Donald J. Trump and Anuradha and Vikas Sinha College of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics.
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