Google Maps has begun showing “Lake America” instead of “Lake Ontario” for users in the United States, following an executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this week amid a U.S.-Canada trade dispute.
The company said the update tracks official U.S. government naming data and does not constitute a political endorsement of the new label.
“The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ in the United States. 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,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” Google wrote in a short blog post.
“These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.”
The display split follows the same approach Google used in 2025 after Trump ordered federal agencies to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Outside the U.S. and Canada, both names are visible to users.
The renaming comes after Trump first threatened to do so in a social media post a few days before the name change. “So this is Lake Ontario, in Canada and in the United States. But we’re gonna make a little change. We’re gonna call it something different than Lake Ontario. We’re gonna call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” the president said.
After crossing out the old name, he added, “So Lake Ontario, that’s gone. Lake America. So now we have a lake, and now we have a gulf, because we have the Gulf of America. Now we have Lake America, without the ‘of.’ Thank you very much, everybody. Enjoy Lake America.”
