It seems to have become a habit. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, unilaterally announces the renaming of a geographical feature that his country shares with one of its neighbors. The country in question protests and says it will continue to use the name it has had for centuries and that until the Republican arrived at the White House, no one had questioned. A few days later, Google announces that its maps application will adapt to Trump’s wishes. This happened in January last year with the Gulf of Mexico (renamed by the White House as the Gulf of America) and has now happened with Lake Ontario (rebranded as Lake America).
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This Sunday, upon entering the Google Maps application from New York, there was no trace of Lake Ontario.
The decision by the tech company comes after Trump signed an executive order last Thursday on camera to change the official name within the United States of Lake Ontario, the smallest of the five Great Lakes that separate the two countries. The Republican leader made this decision as retaliation for the trade war between the two neighbors, traditional allies until Trump’s arrival at the White House.
The order affects the United States Board on Geographic Names (GNIS), which establishes the naming on the country’s official maps. But it has no effect on how the rest of the world refers to the geographical features.
“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes from official government sources — such as the GNIS in the case of the United States — people using Maps in the United States will see Lake America, those in Canada will continue to see Lake Ontario, and those outside both countries will see both names,” Google said in a blog post released this Saturday. The company adds that this decision follows its policy for names that vary from one country to another, and that it is effective immediately.
Trump’s decision is part of a confrontation with his neighbor that led the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, to declare that the country was at war (commercially, it is understood). Carney immediately reacted to Trump’s announcement by stating that the name Lake Ontario has more than 400 years of history, and therefore predates both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. “We know that the United States is changing: its trade relations, its foreign policies, its national monuments, its hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario: yesterday, today, and always,” he wrote on his X account.
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The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.
The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.…
— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) August 27, 2026
Much more prosaically, Trump has reacted with videos posted on his social networks generated by artificial intelligence showing a battalion of ducks with the characteristic tuft of the President of the United States and armed with shotguns marching around the lake. Or, in another video, the Republican himself kicking down a sign with the name Lake Ontario to place a new one with the name he has pulled out of thin air. In another post on his Truth account, Trump shows an image of Google Maps with the new name.
The Governor of New York, Democrat Kathy Hochul, has made it clear that she does not intend to use the new name in her state, which shares an extensive border with Canada. As a result, Trump has been sending messages against Hochul for days.
For his part, the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, presented on Saturday a large sign on the shores of the lake with the bilingual inscription in French and English: “Lake Ontario: now and always.” “President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I assure you that the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario,” Ford said.
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