Major mapping apps have started to reflect a U.S. government decision to relabel a Great Lake, with Apple joining Google in applying the new name to users in the United States.
Apple Maps has officially changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump executive order. Reuters reported the same change for Apple Maps Apple Maps changes.
Label switch
Google switched its own labels soon after the U.S. Geographic Names Information System updated its record, and Apple’s update follows that same pattern of adopting the federal register into consumer maps Google updated.
The display is location dependent: the Canadian version of Apple Maps continues to show “Lake Ontario” for users in Canada, and international users see both labels in some views Canadian version both names.
This is not the first instance of the two companies aligning with the federal list. Both Apple and Google previously switched the label for the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” after a similar federal action.
Mixed reaction
The change has already produced divergent behaviour across mapping services. Some providers, notably MapQuest, refused to adopt the new U.S. name and that stance coincided with a surge in downloads, briefly putting it atop Apple’s App Store charts MapQuest refuses.
What matters for people is practical: the labels you see on your phone will now be set by national registers and by each app’s decision to follow them, not by a single international authority. Crossing the border between the U.S. and Canada may now return different names depending on which map app and which country view you are using.