Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario, which straddles the border between the United States and Canada, to Lake America for US users to reflect President Donald Trump’s August 27 executive order renaming the lake, Google said in a blog post.
Recently, Trump changed the name of the smallest of the five Great Lakes by executive order, according to the White House. The move comes amid an escalating trade dispute between Canada and the United States, which has seen both countries impose tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods.
The US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which sets the standard for official US maps, has renamed Lake Ontario in the United States as “Lake America,” according to the blog post.
In January 2025, Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’ through an executive order issued on his first day in office. Following the executive order, Google Maps made a similar change to the Gulf of Mexico in February.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney immediately rejected the name change on the same day the executive order was issued. Meanwhile, the move has drawn negative reactions from Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Republican Vermont Governor Phil Scott.
Hochul said that “New York won’t be calling it that,” and Scott called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media, according to Reuters.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now and always,” Carney wrote on social media platform X.
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