Google has announced that it has formally changed the name for Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for Google Maps users in the United States, in line with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order which followed an escalating trade war with Canada. The company explains that it normally updates Google Maps “to reflect name changes in official government sources”, which means people using the app in the United States will see the lake as “Lake America,” the way Trump intended. But users in Canada will continue seeing it as Lake Ontario, as it has been known for some 400 years.
Google Maps users outside the U.S. and Canada will see both names. The name Lake Ontario appeared first in a search conducted by Newsweek outside the United States, whereas the name “Lake America” appeared between brackets. The company’s decision is in opposition to that of another longtime mapping service, MapQuest, which recently declared it will not be changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” “We’re not changing it,” the company wrote on X Thursday in a viral post, sharing a screenshot that continued to identify one of the five Great Lakes as Lake Ontario.
MapQuest later launched a name generator that lets users rename the lake themselves. Newsweek contacted the White House, Canada’s Office of the Prime Minister, and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs for comment by email early on Sunday morning, outside of standard working hours. Announcing the name change, Trump said he was ordering to rename the lake “America” in recognition of its role in boosting the U.S. economy “and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people.” On Saturday, he shared an AI-generated video on his social media platform, Truth Social, created by another user which said “Lake America - Protected by Donald Ducks.” The video shows the lake as patrolled by geese wearing Trump-style blond wigs and armed with rifles.
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