Lake America? Trump's Lake Ontario name change creates map mayhem for Apple and Google.

By Hannah Pedone

Google Maps now shows different names depending on a user's country, while a Trump administration official says Apple has been 'directly' contacted by the president about making changes

Apple Maps still shows Lake Ontario, but Google Maps now displays Lake America to U.S. users.

President Donald Trump's order to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America has created a thorny situation for those relying on digital mapping tools.

As with Trump's 2025 decision to designate the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the latest move left major technology companies in the crosshairs. While Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) has attempted to strike a balance depending on a user's geography, Apple (AAPL) has yet to update its Maps app with the Lake America name.

Trump's directive came on Thursday, and Google Maps updated with the Lake America name for U.S. users over the weekend. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps still display Lake Ontario to Canadian users. Google said that users elsewhere in the world will see the body of water labeled as "Lake Ontario (Lake America)."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said Monday in an interview on Fox News that "the president reached out to Apple directly, so I'm sure we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America."

According to a Google blog post, the update follows its "long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country."

But even having an established policy for map names doesn't necessarily avoid controversy. Canadians became outraged over the weekend as a number of companies and government organizations in Ontario and elsewhere displayed "Lake America" on their websites, as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That's because many companies leverage Google's application programming interfaces so that they don't have to develop their own expensive mapping software, and the Google APIs were displaying "Lake America."

Toronto-based electricity provider Hydro One, for instance, told MarketWatch that for a "brief period" on Sunday, their outage map displayed an "incorrect label for Lake Ontario as a result of an issue with a third-party mapping service." The company said the issue was corrected on Sunday evening.

And how the change is displayed elsewhere abroad is yet another question.

As of Monday Eastern time, if you used Google Maps in China, which requires using a VPN, the body of water displayed the name "Lake Ontario," according to China-based users. Apple Maps, which doesn't require a VPN in China, also displayed "Lake Ontario."

This wouldn't be the first time names for bodies of water have diverged around the world. While Google Maps displays "Gulf of America" when in the map in the U.S., "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" is displayed in China, according to users in the country.

Hansong Li, a political scientist at American University, told MarketWatch that while federal agencies must adopt names of bodies of water as stipulated by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a federal database for geographic names, private companies are not obliged by law to do so. Still, they will often choose to, especially if "cornered and caught in the heat of geopolitical renaming."

"Apple changed Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and it has not shown the will or the strength to defy Trump's wishes. Now that President Trump and Doug Burgum are openly calling for Apple to follow suit, I can hardly see a path for Apple to say no," he said.

He thinks tech companies in the current political environment "cannot afford to disregard executive orders, as presidential favor has never been so crucial, and presidential wrath never so dreadful."

Meanwhile, U.S. government agencies themselves haven't universally adopted the change, or done so swiftly.

The weather map displayed on NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, continued to show Lake Ontario on Monday. NOAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Department of State also did not immediately update on its website the name change for the body of water. The agency posted to X on Friday: "We have corrected this mistake and apologize for deadnaming the lake."

And in the modern technological era, artificial-intelligence models add a new wrinkle to corporate conventions.

When asked, "What is the correct name? Lake Ontario or Lake America?" Google's Gemini 3.6 Flash told MarketWatch: "The internationally recognized and historical name is Lake Ontario," citing AP News, and that the U.S .government "does not have international authority to force Canada or international organizations to alter the name," citing the Economic Times.

The U.S. Embassy in Canada referred MarketWatch to the White House for comment, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

See also: Microsoft's stock seals its longest winning streak of the year as AI software fears fade

-Hannah Pedone

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

09-01-26 0813ET