Google Maps is showing “Lake America” where “Lake Ontario” used to appear for users inside the United States.
The change went live this week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the Great Lake, a move tied to the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada. Google confirmed the update in a short blog post, making clear it does not view the change as a political endorsement.
The company explained its position plainly. The U.S. Geographic Names Information System, the official federal source Google uses for domestic place names, formally updated the lake’s name. Google’s policy is to mirror that system. As a result, American users see “Lake America,” Canadian users still see “Lake Ontario,” and everyone else sees both names side by side.
As originally reported, this is not the first time Google has split a body of water’s name along national lines. Earlier in 2025, Trump directed federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Google applied the same country-by-country display approach at that time.
Trump telegraphed the Lake Ontario move on social media before the pen ever hit paper. In a post made just days before the official name change, he laid out his thinking with characteristic bluntness.
“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,” Trump said.
He then crossed out the old name and kept going. “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.”
The name now appears on the largest mapping platform in the world for roughly 340 million American users, whether they are searching for weekend trips, shipping routes, or simply curious about geography. Canadian users opening the same app see a different answer to the same question.
Google’s blog post noted the rollout was already underway. The company did not specify a timeline for when all U.S. users would see the updated label displayed consistently across the platform.