Apple has renamed Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for US users of its Maps app, after an executive order from Donald Trump to change the name of the Great Lake amid his trade spat with Canada.
The Apple Maps app now displays the controversial new name for the lake, which sits between New York state and the Canadian province of Ontario, for users in the US. Apple users outside the country will still see the Lake Ontario name.
Apple had been reportedly mulling whether to submit to Trump’s new order after receiving a personal request from the president for the tech company to change the lake’s name.
Trump welcomed the news, declaring in a Truth Social post that the adoption of “Lake America” by Google Maps and Apple Maps meant the name change was “complete, ratified, and binding”. However, the US cannot compel Canada – or any other country – to also change the name.
The US president officially unveiled the name swap last week. He did not mention his escalating trade feud with the US’s northern neighbors in the order, but the timing suggested a retaliatory move after Canadian officials denounced Trump’s new sweeping tariffs and promised to instate tariffs of their own.
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, rejected the attempt to rename the body of water, saying in a post on social media that the lake’s name comes from the language of the Indigenous Wendat people and predates both the Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.
Late last month, trade talks between Washington and Ottawa collapsed, with the US subsequently imposing a 50% tariff on several Canadian imports. Trump additionally threatened another round of 50% duties on Canadian steel, trucks, cars and auto parts to take effect in the new year. Carney retaliated with 25-50% tariffs on hundreds of US goods.
Rather than mention any of this, Trump instead said in the order that the purpose of the renaming is to honor “the policy of my Administration to recognize the extraordinary contributions of the American people and the rich heritage of our history by naming great natural landmarks for our shared achievements”.
Earlier this week, Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said in an interview with Fox Business that “the president has reached out to Apple directly” and predicted with confidence that US users would “be seeing that change coming up soon”.
Apple’s competitor, Google, already made the change over the weekend, with Google Maps now showing the Lake America branding. Google cited Trump’s order and its practice of using names assigned by the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
In a blogpost issued on Saturday, Google said US users would see the Lake America name while users in Canada will see Lake Ontario, and “those outside of the US and Canada will see both names.”
The digital name change is unsurprising considering Google Maps was an early adopter of the Gulf of America moniker and still currently displays the title, despite the renaming hardly being a success outside US government lingo.
On Tuesday, it was reported that MapQuest, the pioneering online mapping app, reached the No 1 spot on Apple’s App Store after openly rejecting Trump’s request to rename the lake. The app simply posted a screenshot of Lake Ontario on social media last Thursday along with the caption: “We’re not changing it.”
The act of defiance was enough to catapult the app into becoming the most in-demand navigation tool in the US.
