{"id":188743,"date":"2026-08-30T18:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T18:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/188743\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T18:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T18:02:08","slug":"google-maps-renames-lake-ontario-lake-america-in-us-but-not-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/188743\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps renames Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ in US – but not Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: Google redesignated Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on maps seen by US users Sunday (Aug 30) after President Donald Trump announced he was renaming the body of water,<\/a> with a Canadian official slamming the cross-border tensions as “absolutely backwards.”<\/p>\n

People in Canada will still see Lake Ontario, the Indigenous-rooted name used for the lake since the 17th century, on their devices and computers, the US-based tech giant said.<\/p>\n

The shock nomenclatural spat erupted as the latest element of Trump’s “America First” narrative, with longtime allies the United States and Canada ramping up a trade war that has seen Washington and Ottawa slap tit-for-tat tariffs on each other.<\/p>\n

Apple’s Maps app, which comes preinstalled on all iPhones, makes no mention of “Lake America” on its maps as of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Google said it made its change in line with the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the official federal database for geographic names.<\/p>\n

“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, 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 on its blog.<\/p>\n

GULF OF AMERICA<\/p>\n

The change mirrors Trump’s unilateral alteration of the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in January 2025 – a move Mexico has also rejected.<\/p>\n

Ontario is the smallest by surface area of the five Great Lakes, which straddle the Canada-US border between Ontario province and the US state of New York.<\/p>\n

The province’s premier, Doug Ford, offered fresh criticism on Sunday of the trade dispute and Trump’s lake-name change.<\/p>\n

“It’s absolutely backwards. It was like something out of (US comedy TV show) ‘Saturday Night Live’ when he signed a document saying – changed to ‘Lake America.’ No one’s going to call it Lake of America,” Ford told ABC talk show “This Week.”<\/p>\n

“It’s just so disappointing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON: Google redesignated Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on maps seen by US users Sunday (Aug 30) after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,49265,37664,59501,28,30],"class_list":["post-188743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-google-maps","tag-lakes","tag-new-map","tag-trump","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}