On August 28, 2026 President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the federal government's own authoritative names database, to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America." Google Maps updated for U.S. users two days later, on August 30, because Google's policy is to mirror whatever GNIS says for U.S. territory.
"These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country." — Google, official Maps blog post
Canadian users still see "Lake Ontario." Everyone else sees both names. Apple Maps and MapQuest simply declined to change anything at all — MapQuest posted a screenshot captioned "we're not changing it."
The lake's real names, already in OpenStreetMap:
| English | Lake Ontario |
| Mohawk | Oniatarí:io |
| Cayuga | Ganyadáiyoˀ |
| Ojibwe | Niigani-gichigami |
| French | Lac Ontario |
"Ontario" itself comes from a Haudenosaunee word for "great lake." New York governor Kathy Hochul called the renaming "patently absurd," pointing out it writes over a name that already honors the region's Indigenous peoples. OpenStreetMap has carried all of these names simultaneously for years — it doesn't have to pick one, because no single government gets to overwrite the record for everyone.
This isn't the first time. In 2025 the same mechanism renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" for U.S. users, which triggered enough review-bombing that Google had to disable reviews on the location entirely. One executive order, one government database, one company that mirrors it by policy — twice now, on two different bodies of water that border other countries.
Sources: Google's official Maps blog · 404 Media · CP24 · Newsweek. Lake geometry and names via OpenStreetMap relation 1206310, ODbL.
Google Maps, opened in the United States, today: the lake reads "Lake America." This is what the majority of this lake's own U.S. shoreline residents will now see by default.
This map runs entirely on OpenStreetMap data, the same data these apps use. No single government gets to rename anything in it for you. If you want your everyday map to work like this too, both are free, open source, and support real turn-by-turn navigation: