Apple Maps changes Lake Ontario name after Trump request

Apple on Tuesday changed the name of Lake Ontario on the web version of its Maps app to “Lake America,” after President Trump directly contacted the tech giant for an update in accordance with his recent executive order .

The company said U.S. users will now find “Lake America” on their maps, following the change in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), Reuters reported . Canadian users will still see Lake Ontario appear on the platform, while international users will see both names, all of which resembles Google’s alteration to its online map.

The Hill has reached out to Apple for comment.

Trump signed the order last week amid his trade war with Canada , as the countries failed to reach a new deal on trade after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled negotiators from the talks last month.

The president set new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods in the aftermath, with Carney retaliating with tariffs to match those from the U.S. “dollar for dollar.” Those levies are expected to go into effect on Sept. 8.

The president said he contemplated renaming Lake Ontario for “a long time,” suggesting that with the lake and the Gulf of Mexico, which he dubbed the “Gulf of America” last year after a similar executive order , “now all we need is an ocean.”

Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford dismissed the renaming, with the latter comparing it to “something out of ‘Saturday Night Live.'”

The Seneca Nation, one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, or Iroquois, urged Trump last Friday to reconsider the renaming, saying it violated terms of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua . Haudenosaunee and U.S. leaders, including President George Washington, agreed that the Seneca Nation’s boundaries begin on Lake Ontario.

The Great Lake is called “sga:nyodai:yoh” in Seneca, translating to “beautiful lake.”

“The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said in a statement last week.

On Monday, MapQuest said its mobile app’s popularity grew online after hundreds of thousands of users downloaded it following its announcement that it would keep the lake’s name as Lake Ontario. It reacted similarly to the controversy surrounding Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, which led Mexico to file a lawsuit against Google in May 2025.

The app has remained in the top spot among navigation apps in Apple’s U.S. App Store, with Google Maps and Waze in the second and third spots, respectively.