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Apple Maps has renamed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for US users, following Google, after a Trump executive order. Here’s what changed and why.
Apple Maps now labels Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for users in the United States, following a Trump executive order.
Apple has followed Google and changed how Lake Ontario appears on its Maps app. US users now see “Lake America” instead. The change came less than a week after President Trump signed an executive order demanding it.
Trump signed the order on August 27. It told the Interior Department to update the lake’s name across federal databases, including the Geographic Names Information System. His order called Lake Ontario “a flourishing economic resource” critical to the country’s economy.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later said Trump reached out to Apple directly to push the change through.
Who Sees What
The name only changes for US users. Open Apple Maps in Canada, and Lake Ontario still shows its original name. Anywhere else in the world, both names appear.
This mirrors exactly what Google Maps did days earlier. Google said it updates names based on official government sources, which is why it moved first.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pushed back hard, pointing out the name “Ontario” comes from a Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,” and predates both countries. Ontario Premier Doug Ford compared the whole thing to a Saturday Night Live sketch.
The Seneca Nation also objected. It’s one of six nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and it argued the renaming violates the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua.
The timing isn’t a coincidence. The US and Canada failed to reach a new trade deal after talks collapsed on August 21. Trump then imposed 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods. Canada hit back with its own tariffs.
Trump has repeatedly tied the lake renaming to his frustration with Canada’s trade policy. He’s also drawn a direct line to his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” last year, joking that “now all we need is an ocean.”
Not every map app went along with it. MapQuest posted “We’re not changing it” the same day Trump signed the order, and kept Lake Ontario’s name as is.
That decision paid off in an unexpected way. MapQuest’s app downloads jumped more than tenfold within a week. By September 1, it had climbed to the No. 1 spot on the US App Store’s free apps chart, ahead of ChatGPT. The company says app usage is now running roughly 50 times higher than normal.
MapQuest’s general manager, Doug Berger, said the company took “the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they’re familiar with.”
September 02, 2026, 21:52 IST
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