President Donald Trump said Sunday he was pleased after Google Maps reflected his newly ordered name change for Lake Ontario, the major Great Lake shared by the United States and Canada, displaying it for American users as “Lake America.”
The update appeared on Google Maps in the U.S. after Trump issued an executive order last week directing the federal renaming. The president highlighted the change by posting a screenshot to his Truth Social account on Sunday.
Trump unveiled the measure Thursday, signing an order instructing the Interior Department to use “Lake America” as the official name for U.S. federal references. The move comes as trade tensions continue to strain relations between Washington and Canada.
The executive order applies only to U.S. government usage and does not require Canada, global mapmakers outside the U.S., or international bodies to recognize the new name. Canadian leaders have sharply criticized the decision.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has repeatedly sparred with Trump, condemned the renaming last week. He defended Lake Ontario’s long-standing name, noting its Indigenous origins in a Wendat term understood to mean “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great.”
Google Maps changed Lake Ontario to Lake America for users in the United States after Trump’s executive renaming order last week
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also pushed back, installing a large “Lake Ontario” sign on the Canadian side of the U.S. border as a symbolic rebuke. The sign carried a clear message: “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.”
Google said in a statement that the U.S. map update “does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake.”
‘Those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario’ on Google Maps, ‘and those outside … the US and Canada will see both names,’ the tech giant added.
The company took a similar approach to Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to be the ‘Gulf of America’ earlier in his second term.
Trump also celebrated the name change with a post of an AI video of himself dancing next to a ‘Lake America’ sign.
One frame of an AI video posted by Trump on Truth Social celebrating the ‘Lake America’ renaming
Like an astronaut planting an American flag on the moon, Trump posted an AI video on Truth Social of himself planting a sign to celebrate his ‘Lake America’ renaming of the Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario forms part of the international boundary between New York State and the Canadian province of Ontario.
It has been jointly managed under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty for more than a century.
But when he signed the executive order on Thursday, Trump said he had contemplated the name change for a ‘long time.’
He then suggested he may not be finished tinkering with the map – joking that the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean could eventually find itself in his sights.
‘Actually, as you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico and we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America,’ Trump said last week.
‘So, if you think about it, we have a Gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.’
The announcement came at a particularly explosive moment in US-Canadian relations.
Trade negotiations between the longtime allies have collapsed, with Trump threatening punishing new tariffs on Canadian goods and Carney promising Canada will retaliate ‘dollar for dollar.’
Trump has said tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, automotive parts and steel will rise to 50 percent by 2027 as he attempts to force more manufacturing into the United States.
And while signing Thursday’s order, the president made clear that his dispute with Ottawa was far bigger than the name of a lake.
‘The whole Canadian thing has to come to a stop,’ Trump said.
‘We are going to be doing tariffs on their cars that are coming in at a substantial level because we want to make the cars here.
‘They can make their own cars if they want and they can continue to make cars for Canada but we don’t want them to make cars for the United States of America. It’s very simple. Likewise many other products.’
Trump also accused Canada of relying on the United States for military protection without adequately compensating Washington.
Back in July, Trump verbally attacked Canada when wildfire smoke drifted across the border into a number of Northern US states, prompting severe air quality alerts and cancelations of of outdoor events.
‘We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,’ Trump posted on Truth Social at the time.
