Google Maps has renamed ‘Lake America’ for users in the US

30 août 2026

Following an executive order late last week, Google Maps has updated its label for “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America.”

If you are located within the United States, viewing “Lake Ontario” via Google Maps will now show the name “Lake America,” following last week’s executive order.

Google, in a brief blog post, confirms that users in Canada will continue to see only “Lake Ontario” while users in other parts of the world will see “Lake Ontario (Lake America).” This can also be seen using a VPN.

Google continues to cite a policy in which it updates location names based on local government data; in this case, the US GNIS, where the name has been updated as of August 27 by the Department of the Interior following Trump’s order. Google referred to this same policy in February 2025 when it updated Maps to show “Gulf of America.”

Until they come to their senses and change it back, I deactivated Google Maps. I'll use MapQuest instead.

Canada has confirmed that it will not be updating the name from “Lake Ontario,” with Prime Minister Mark Carney stating that “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.” Carney added that the name comes “from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.'”

Notably, competitor MapQuest has directly said it will not change the name, instead building out a name generator that allows users to create their own new names for the lake, mocking the change. Apple Maps is not yet showing the name either. Apple changed “Gulf of America” within a day or two of Google back in February, though.

Steep backlash pushed Google to limit new reviews of “Gulf of America” in 2025, but the same limitation has yet to be placed on “Lake America,” we observed in testing.