Kathrine Frich
The apps still display Lake Ontario.
Neighbours who share a long border usually agree on what to call the landmarks between them.
Maps rely on those shared names so travellers and businesses stay on the same page.
Lately, though, even looking up a major body of water depends entirely on which side of the line you stand on.
A bold map claim
Speaking at a rally for Senator Darline Graham in Pendleton, South Carolina, on Wednesday, President Donald Trump boasted about his push to rename Lake Ontario, according to the Irish Star.
Although he failed to recall the original name of the water on stage, he insisted the switch to “Lake America” was a huge hit across the northern border.
“And recently I changed the name of a lake. That fronts… you know the, you know the lake… I should, but… I did it very lightly and the damn thing got changed actually. It’s actually… that’s power, right? When you sort of do it halfheartedly and it gets changed, it’s changed,” Trump said, as quoted by the Irish Star.
Then he claimed that America’s northern neighbours loved the move. “It’s called the Lake of America. True. And then I got rid of the…. And I just said, because you don’t need the ‘of.’ I said it’s just called Lake America, so it’s very, very nice. Canada’s thrilled with that. So, it was crazy, right? Crazy,” Trump told the crowd, according to the outlet.
Canada pushes back
Despite the president’s claim, leaders in Ottawa were far from happy when he signed the executive order in August during a bitter tariff dispute, according to Global News and the Associated Press.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney immediately rejected the move on X, writing that “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario, then, now and always”.
Other regional leaders were even more blunt about the order. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston dismissed the idea on social media, stating: “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy”.
Still, major tech companies moved quickly to follow Washington’s directive inside the United States, the Associated Press and BNN Bloomberg reported. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps updated their apps so American users now see “Lake America” on their screens.
Across the border in Canada, however, the apps still display Lake Ontario. According to The Jerusalem Post, Ontario official Stephen Crawford even ordered a review of provincial government websites that pull data from Google Maps to ensure every public page keeps the traditional name.
