Tech giant Google faced widespread criticism over the weekend for becoming the first major online map provider to change the name of "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" for its US users, after President Donald Trump ordered the name change in…
Page B3From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
White House orders Google Maps to rename Lake Ontario 'Lake America,' outlets call it embarrassing.
As it ran on the front
Lake Ontario, the name, as printed for American users of Google Maps, died this week at the age of 231 in Washington, per an executive order and its digital confirmation. It was survived by the same body of water, unchanged, still shared with Canada, still cold, still there. It was preceded in death by several other place names quietly retired by federal memo, and by the patience of the cartographers who now update the label instead of the map.
The cause was administrative: the White House ordered the rename, and Google Maps complied, adopting 'Lake America' for U.S. users, a change one outlet called embarrassing and another called adopted, which in this line of work amounts to the same obituary read twice.…
…(cont) Lake Ontario was born of the Wisconsin glaciation, roughly 12,000 years before either country existed to name it. It held its name through two world wars, the founding of the United Nations, and a trade agreement or two, outlasting several presidents who did not feel the need to rename it. It is survived by Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, all of whom, as of this writing, remain unrenamed, though the family has been asked not to get comfortable.
No cause of death was disputed by the agency responsible, because no agency was asked to dispute it; the order stands on its own, the way orders do when nobody with the authority to reverse them is inclined to. This is not the first name replaced by an executive signature and it will not be the last; whippersnapper acts like this rarely announce themselves as history, they just show up in the app the next time you open it for directions.
The lake itself has issued no statement. It continues to do what lakes do, indifferent to the label, holding roughly 393 cubic miles of water it did not ask to have renamed, bordered by a country that still calls it what it has always been called.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you leave a comment during the next public review period for geographic names, assuming one is still held.
“They renamed a lake by executive order and called it patriotism. Nobody asked Canada, nobody asked the lake, nobody asked the app. This is what happens when you run a country like a social media account — the map changes before the water does.”
“This is simply a platform update reflecting a presidential designation, nothing more. Google Maps updates place names constantly for all kinds of — okay, not for all kinds of reasons, mostly just this one, but the point stands, it's an update.”
The receipts
Google updated its Maps application on Sunday in adherence with an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Thursday that renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. Titled, “Honoring the American history of the Great Lakes and renaming…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.