Google Maps now show ‘Lake America’ in US, not ‘Lake Ontario’

Google Maps has changed the name of “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” for US users to reflect president Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the lake, according to a Google statement.

Trump announced on Thursday that he was changing the name of the smallest of the five Great Lakes, part of an escalating trade feud with Canada that has prompted the two countries to impose reciprocal tariffs on billions of dollars in goods.

The president’s order affects the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which sets the standards for official US maps. It does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake.

“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, people using Maps in the US will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names,” Google said in a blog post issued on Saturday.

The White House, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s office and Ontario premier Doug Ford’s office did not immediately comment on Google’s decision on Sunday.

Google Maps made a similar change to the Gulf of Mexico last year, labelling it the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order on his first day in office renaming the body of water.

Carney immediately rejected the lake’s name change on Thursday. Democratic governor Kathy Hochul of New York, which shares a long border with Canada, declared that “New York won’t be calling it that,” while Phil Scott, the Republican governor of neighbouring Vermont, called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media.

In Ontario, Ford on Saturday unveiled a large lakeside sign that reads, “Lake Ontario: Now and Always,” in both English and French.

“President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you, the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario,” Ford said.

On Sunday evening, an Ontario minister, Stephen Crawford, said the province was reviewing its websites after Lake America appeared on sites like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The LCBO, a major global buyer, is not stocking US alcohol due to the trade war.

“Some Ontario government agency websites pull map data directly from Google Maps,” Crawford said on the social media site X. “Following recent changes by Google, we’re actively reviewing our websites to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario”.

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