RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. MapQuest will not be changing the name of Lake Ontario after President Donald Trump ordered the body of water to be called “Lake America” for U.S. federal use.
“We’re not changing it,” the longtime mapping service wrote on X Thursday in a viral post, sharing a screenshot that continued to identify one of the five Great Lakes as Lake Ontario.
The company later doubled down, launching a name generator that lets users rename the lake themselves.
“We’re not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure,” MapQuest wrote, alongside an image labeling the body of water, “Lake Are We Doing This Again?”
The original post had garnered more than 4.7 million views as of Friday evening, returning the service to the spotlight—and raising another question: Will Google Maps follow Trump’s order?
Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for U.S. federal use amid escalating tensions following the collapse of trade talks between the United States and Canada. The president had floated the idea in the days leading up to the order.
Trump said Thursday that Canada was “the worst” to deal with on trade. “They feel entitled and we can’t have that.”
In the executive order, Trump pointed to the lake’s importance to American exploration, commerce and defense, as well as U.S. investment in protecting the Great Lakes.
The order said Lake Ontario has historically served as a critical route for American trade, commerce and military logistics and continues to play an important role in shipping, manufacturing, agriculture and energy.
The White House on Friday shared a message from U.S. Geological Survey Director Ned Mamula, saying the agency had officially designated the body of water as Lake America in its electronic documents.
“As of 4:30 pm today the U.S. Geological Survey has officially designated the former Lake Ontario to be renamed as Lake America in all official USGS electronic documents,” the message on X said.
It added that the change had also been made official in the Geographic Names Information System, or GNIS, and would begin appearing in printed documents over the next several days.
The executive order applies to U.S. federal usage and does not require Canada or private companies to adopt the new name. The move echoes Trump’s decision last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America for U.S. federal use.
MapQuest, which launched in 1996 as the first commercial web mapping service, became a household name for online directions years before Google Maps arrived.
Its response to Trump's executive order drew widespread attention online, with some users praising the company and others poking fun at the service’s sudden resurgence.
Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, was among those who responded. “Shocking to see you’re still alive,” he wrote on X. “I thought the iPhone 3 took you out 15 years ago.”
Others joined in by using MapQuest’s name generator to come up with their own alternatives for the lake.
The name change itself also drew pushback from officials on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the name change, pointing to the centuries-old history of Lake Ontario’s name. The prime minister said on X that the name comes from the Wendat word “Ontari’io,” meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,” and predates both Canadian Confederation and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now and always,” Carney wrote.
Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul also weighed in. “New York won’t be calling it that,” she wrote on X in response to the White House announcement.
The State Department, meanwhile, took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the name change. “It was brought to our attention that Lake America was erroneously labeled as Lake ‘Ontario’ on our website,” the department wrote on its official X account. “We have corrected this mistake and apologize for deadnaming the lake.”
There is precedent for Google adopting a geographic name change ordered by Trump after the new designation appears in official U.S. government sources.
When Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in 2025, Google said updating its maps following the change in official U.S. government sources was consistent with its “longstanding practices.”
GNIS has now been updated to reflect the Lake America designation. If Google follows the same practice it used for the Gulf of Mexico, the federal update could result in “Lake America” appearing on Google Maps for users in the United States.
Newsweek has contacted Google for comment on whether it plans to adopt the Lake America name following MapQuest’s rejection.
On February 10, 2025, Google said GNIS had officially updated Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and that it had begun rolling out changes to Google Maps to reflect the new designation. The name displayed depended on a user’s location.
People using Google Maps in the United States saw Gulf of America, while users in Mexico continued seeing Gulf of Mexico. Users elsewhere saw both.
Google said the approach followed its practice of using official government sources for geographic names and displaying both names when official designations differ between countries.
Whether Google Maps will take the same tack regarding Lake Ontario remains to be seen.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kate Nalepinski and Edward T. Cummins.
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