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Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" even faster than US government
Google rolled out the Lake America change on Saturday, while the official US government maps are still waiting.
Trade talks between the US and Canada broke down last week, leading to a wave of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs. US President Donald Trump also fell back on an old favorite to needle his opponents, signing an executive order on Thursday to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
The body of water, which straddles the US-Canada border, gave its name to the Canadian province rather than the other way around. Regardless, the US government now refers to this great lake as Lake America—or it will soon. Official US government maps have yet to be updated, but Google wasted no time adopting the new, Trumpian name.
Google began rolling out this change for US users on Saturday. The company posted a brief update on its Google Maps blog, noting that it follows the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) for its maps, so the company implies it had no choice but to rename Lake Ontario in Google Maps, which is the most popular mapping platform in the US by a wide margin.
However, Google was even quicker to switch over to Lake America than the US government. While the GNIS database acknowledges the name change in a summary report, the base map layer still reflects the internationally recognized name of Lake Ontario. A message across the top of the USGS-operated website notes that the change to official maps is still pending.
But people don’t generally go looking for GNIS maps—they check Google Maps when they want to find something. According to Google, those in the US will only see the new Americanized name. Meanwhile, Canadians will continue to see the standard Lake Ontario label. In the rest of the world, Lake Ontario will take precedence, but Lake America will be included in parentheses.
This mirrors how Google handled the “Gulf of America” situation in 2025. The company changed the name for US users, left it unchanged in Mexico, and showed both names in the rest of the world. It also reverted Mount Denali to Mount McKinley in accordance with the same order. However, the company did wait several weeks after the executive order before making that shift. Google’s rapid adoption of the new official US name for the body of water suggests that it will continue to rename geological features based on executive orders, which may only embolden the administration to rename more things.
While Apple Maps did adopt the Gulf of America name shortly after Google last year, it has not yet scrubbed Lake Ontario from its maps as of this posting. Some less-used mapping apps like MapQuest have vowed not to make the change at all.