Google Maps renames Lake Ontario to Lake America in the United States following the criteria of the White House

What was previously known as Lake Ontario, now appears as Lake America. It is one of Donald Trump’s latest capricious decisions, renaming the name of this enormous body of water that serves as a natural border between the United States and Canada. This, as could not be otherwise, affects Google Maps. It is interesting that this geographical feature is border because, as CNN has confirmed, It will be the users from the first country who will only see the new name. However, this will not be the case with those on the other side of the border.

Google’s arguments are the usual ones in these cases. The technology multinational has clarified that this adjustment is due to its usual cartographic updating policy based on official government sources, such as the United States Geographic Names Information System, also known as GNIS. That is why the changes will only be fully applied in this territory. Now, in case you were wondering, in the rest of the world the platform will show both denominations combined to reflect the discrepancy between both countries.

We have done the checking ourselves and, although the original name is still shown on the map, the new name already appears in parentheses on the lake sheet. This happens even when using “Lake Ontario” as a search item, without making any mention of “America.”

This is not an isolated event

It must be remembered that this is not the first time that Google changes a geographical name following the whims of the White House. It’s something that already happened when Donald Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. The procedure in this case was the same. The company opted for the double name, putting the new name in parentheses. At least, that’s how it looks from Europe.

The response in Canada has not been long in coming to what they consider a unilateral alteration of a border treaty with hundreds of years of history. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, along with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, have reaffirmed that the lake will retain its historic name regardless of the decisions of the neighboring administration. As CNN information highlights, Canadian authorities have installed official signage along the northern shore, which is the one that belongs to Canada, remembering the century-old name of the body of water.

Not all platforms adopt the name

Something curious is that Google’s position is not shared throughout the sector. In fact, you only have to look at what other map providers have done. We have been able to confirm that applications such as Apple Maps or Waze, which curiously belongs to Google, continue to maintain the traditional name of Lake Ontario in their databases despite the US executive order. For its part, the MapQuest platform has been even more blunt on social networks by publicly confirming that does not plan to make any changes to the name of your maps for users in any country.

Obviously, Google’s way of acting generates some controversy and raises some legitimate questions. To what extent can international geographical features be renamed arbitrarily by political decrees? Although the company argues that it is only using the official name in each territory, the fact that other platforms choose to maintain the historical name of Lake Ontario suggests that Google could also do the same. Is this just another way to please the Trump administration?