President Donald Trump said Sunday he was pleased after Google Maps reflected his administration’s decision to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for users in the United States.
The Google Maps update appeared after Trump issued an executive order last week changing the name for U.S. users. On Sunday, the president highlighted the switch by posting a screenshot of the map on his Truth Social account.
Trump first unveiled the renaming effort on Thursday, signing an order that instructed the Interior Department to recognize “Lake America” as the official name of the body of water for U.S. federal use, as trade tensions with Canada continued to simmer.
The directive does not require Canada or international bodies to use the new name, and the decision has already drawn criticism from Canadian leaders.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has repeatedly sparred with Trump, condemned the Lake Ontario name change last week. He emphasized the lake’s Indigenous origins, noting that “Ontario” comes from a Wendat word commonly understood to mean “the lake is beautiful, the lake is great.”
Google Maps made the switch from Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America for US users following an executive renaming order from Trump last week
Ontario premier Doug Ford erected a giant ‘Lake Ontario’ sign on his side of America’s northern border in a show of protest over Trump’s move, posting up a message that read: ‘Lake Ontario. Now and Always’.
In a statement, Google noted that the move, ‘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.
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.’
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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.
One frame of an AI video posted by Trump on Truth Social celebrating the ‘Lake America’ renaming
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.