Apple May Soon Join Google In Renaming Lake Ontario After Donald Trump’s Executive Order

Apple may soon join Google in adopting the name Lake America for the body of water long known as Lake Ontario – at least for U.S. users of its map. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to change the name of the lake amid a trade dispute with Canada marked by threats by the president to hike tariffs if U.S. demands are not met. The move is similar to his order last year that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America, a change that news outlets have largely resisted even though it appears on online maps. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the U.S. Geologic Survey’s names and information system, which his department oversees, has adopted the new name for Lake Ontario following the executive order. That update has triggered changes on many tech platforms, he said, aided by some additional lobbying. “The president reached out to Apple directly, so I’m sure we may see that change coming up soon,” Burgum said Monday in an interview on Fox Business. Google confirmed Saturday in a blog post that U.S. users of Google Maps are already seeing Lake America as the name, while Canadian users are still seeing it as Lake Ontario. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, users of Google Maps are shown both names. Watch on Deadline Trump’s focus on what his administration has called “making the Great Lakes even greater” has prompted a flurry of memes and jabs in recent days, including from figures known to be largely sympathetic to Trump. NFL broadcaster Al Michaels nodded to the stir during Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of a pre-season game played in Buffalo, whose downtown is along Lake Erie but also just a few miles from Lake Ontario. As the cityscape near the stadium appeared on the broadcast, Michaels joked, “That is Lake Erie. We think it is still called Lake Erie… We’re not quite sure at this point. But we’ll be by Lake ‘Something Like Ontario’ or whatever it’s going to be called by the time we get to Buffalo. Anyway, you know what I’m talking about… Read the news.” Canadians are not inclined to countenance the new name, which has been rolled out after waves of antagonism and threates to make the country the 51st state in the U.S. Prime Minister Mark Carney noted in a post on X that the name Lake Ontario is more than 400 years old and predates the formation of both the U.S. and Canada. “We know that America is changing,” Carney wrote. “Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”