Google Maps changes Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ in US but not Canada

[TORONTO] Google has updated its maps application, labelling Lake Ontario as Lake America for users in the US, following an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump amid an escalating trade war with Canada.

The decision of the tech giant reflects what it did when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in 2025.

The change has started to be rolled out, Google said in a blog post, adding that it was following its practice of using the name given by the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

The US president’s order to rename the lake affects the US GNIS, which sets the standards for official US maps, but it does not impact Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake.

“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 its statement.

Trump’s decision to rename the lake on Thursday (Aug 27) was met with derision and shrugs in Canada and across the US, and sparked a series of online memes and late night jokes.

He leaned into his decision, posting an artificial intelligence-generated video depicting geese sporting his signature hairstyle, armed with semi-automatic weapons and shooting the guns under a sign that read “Lake America”.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from fraught US trade talks on Aug 21, over what he called a “bad deal” that would harm Canada’s economy and sovereignty.

Carney rejected the lake’s name change on Thursday. He has since responded to the renaming with a statement about the lake’s history, noting that Ontario is a historical indigenous name for the lake that predates the creation of Canada and the US.

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“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney said on Thursday.

“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, which shares a long border with Canada, declared that “New York won’t be calling (the lake) that”, while Phil Scott, the Republican Governor of neighbouring Vermont, called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media.

Ontario Premier Doug 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 (LCBO). 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”.

The collapse of the trade talks this month triggered new US tariffs on Canadian goods, and was countered by Canadian tariffs on US goods expected to take effect Sep 8.

It has also unleashed a war of words, with Trump reviving his long-standing comments about Canada becoming the 51st state, and calling Carney and the Canadian leadership “nasty”.

Canadians have rallied behind Carney but are bracing for the economic impact of a protracted dispute with their neighbor and biggest trading ally. NYTIMES, REUTERS