Google Maps changes Lake Ontario to 'Lake America' on US phones
The Hill · C · trust 55/100
Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 08/30/26 10:45 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 08/30/26 10:45 AM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING Google Maps on Saturday changed the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for U.S. users, while keeping the name intact for Canadian Google users and carrying both names for international users, following President Trump’s executive order to rename the Great Lake.
The tech giant cited its name change to the U.S. Geographic Names Information System’s (GNIS) formal renaming.
“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,” the company said in a statement .
Trump signed an executive order to rename the Great Lake, “ effective immediately ,” amid his trade war with Canada, which has retaliated with its own tariffs on copper wire, wood, charcoal, steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics, leaving seafood and fish products exempt.
He cited the lake’s natural resources and historical ties to the U.S.’s early development to recognize this “flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people.”
Google’s move to rename the lake resembles its renaming of the Gulf of Mexico last year, after Trump signed an executive order to rename it the “Gulf of America.”
That order stated that the label applies to “the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in February 2025 that the name change affected “the continental shelf of Mexico and Cuba, which has nothing to do with Trump’s decree, which applied only to the U.S. continental shelf.”
The Mexican government later sued Google in May 2025.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Sunday said the Great Lake’s renaming was “like something out of ‘Saturday Night Live .'”
“No one’s going to call it Lake America,” Ford told “This Week” host Martha Raddatz on ABC. “It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue to be Lake Ontario.”
The Seneca Nation, one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy, on Friday called on Trump to rescind the order , with President J. Conrad Seneca saying the renaming violated the terms of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua .
The treaty, signed by Haudenosaunee leaders and President George Washington, laid out the Seneca Nation’s boundaries as “beginning on Lake Ontario.” In Seneca, the body of water is called “sga:nyodai:yoh,” which translates to “beautiful lake.”
“The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca said in a statement.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also denounced the name change , pointing to the Wendat Nation’s word to describe the lake, Ontari’io, “which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”
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