Google Maps Has Renamed Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ for Americans
Google Maps has made the switch — for Americans, at least.
A search on the mapping app on Sunday shows the name “Lake America” for the body of water adjoining northern New York and southern Ontario, known until very recently — and still to most — as Lake Ontario.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that he said would “immediately” rename the body of water to “Lake America.” Canadian officials have said they will not recognize the new name.
In a blog post, Google said it changed the lake’s name after the US Geographic Names Information System, the federal government’s official database of place names, did the same.
“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,'” the company said.
Canadian users will still see “Lake Ontario,” according to Google. Viewers in the rest of the world will see both names.
As of Sunday, Apple Maps still says “Lake Ontario.” The company did not respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.
Trump made the switch in retaliation after trade talks between the longtime allies broke down last week. The Trump administration imposed an additional 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods on August 22. Canada then responded in kind. Trump is now threatening 50% tariffs on auto and steel imports from Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that those tariffs would be “devastating on the US.”
“A tariff on Canada is nothing more than a tax on the American people,” he said.
Many Google Maps users wondered if the company would follow Trump’s lead after the president announced the change. MapQuest, the original online mapping service that Google obliterated despite having a near 10-year head start, briefly returned to prominence last week by refusing to change the name of the Great Lake.
“We’re not changing it,” the company said in one post. In another, the company invited users to name the lake “whatever you want.”
The stalwart “we’re not changing it” post has more than 5 million views on X. None of the account’s 24 posts in July got more than two likes.
Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister who bowed out of trade negotiations after he said the United States introduced “unfair” last-minute changes, wrote in a post on X that “naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario.”
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” Carney said.
Trump also renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” shortly after returning to office, part of an effort to restore what he called names that honor “American greatness.”
Google, owing to its policy of following GNIS designations, also now refers to the body of water as the “Gulf of America” on Google Maps.
