Apple Renames Lake Ontario 'Lake America' for US Users After Trump Order

WASHINGTON —

Apple Maps has started labeling Lake Ontario as "Lake America" for users in the United States, following an August 27 executive order from President Donald Trump, Bloomberg reported. The change appeared first on the desktop version of the app, with the mobile version still showing both names as of this week, according to Engadget.

Under the order, the switch applies only within US federal systems. Canadian users of Apple Maps will keep seeing "Lake Ontario," and users outside both countries will see both names, Bloomberg reported. Google made the same change to its Maps app shortly after the order came out, syncing its listings to the Geographic Names Information System, the federal database the Interior Department is required to update within 30 days under the order.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Trump had "reached out to Apple directly" to push the company to comply, according to comments reported by Reuters. The order itself, titled "Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America," argues that the US bears most of the cost of protecting the lake, saying the Coast Guard supplies nine of eleven icebreakers on the Great Lakes and that Washington has spent nearly $4 billion protecting the lake system over the past decade.

A Third Rename in Two Years

Apple and Google made a similar change last year, relabeling the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" after an earlier Trump order. This time, not every map app has gone along. MapQuest publicly refused, posting "We're not changing it" on social media in late August, according to The Guardian. The company's general manager, Doug Berger, said in a statement that app usage was running at roughly 50 times its normal rate afterward. MapQuest's app climbed to the No. 1 spot on Apple's US App Store chart this week, ahead of both Google Maps and Apple Maps, TechCrunch reported.

Opposition in Congress and Ontario

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63 percent of Americans oppose renaming the lake, while only 14 percent support it, according to the Independent. The dispute has unfolded alongside a broader trade fight with Canada, after the US imposed a 50 percent tariff on roughly $20 billion (Canadian dollar figure not specified) of Canadian imports, prompting retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa set to take effect September 8.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told ABC News, "No one's going to call it Lake of America. It's been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It's going to continue being Lake Ontario." In Washington, Representatives Tim Kennedy and Joe Morelle of New York and Debbie Dingell of Michigan introduced legislation titled the "Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act," which would nullify Trump's order and bar federal money from being used to rename any of the five Great Lakes, according to a statement from Kennedy's office.