The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see “Lake America,” those in Canada will continue to see “Lake Ontario,” and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.
Congratulations to Google: the “which will capitulate first, Google, Apple, or Fox ‘News’?” derby trophy is yours. You must be so proud.
Google said Canadians would see “Lake Ontario,” but for a while, at least, several Canadian websites that rely on Google Maps were wrongly displaying “Lake America.” Some of them have since resolved the issue, which was likely caused by a misconfigured API call, but the unexpected name change highlights the deep reliance non-U.S. businesses have on U.S. companies and is a reminder of the importance of digital sovereignty.
Apple, as of this writing, continues to accurately label the lake as “Lake Ontario,” but it’s just a matter of time—and Reuters reports that Donald Trump is already bullying Apple into making the change:
“The president reached out to Apple directly, so I’m sure that we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America,” [Interior Secretary Doug] Burgum said in an interview on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” program.
Not that Apple needs bullying; as demonstrated with the Gulf of Mexico, they’re more than capable of capitulating on their own.
To close this out, let me acknowledge a point my former colleague Dave Rahardja raised on Mastodon:
Yes, place names in the U.S. come from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which is run by the federal government, and yes, mapping services do “defer to GNIS for official names by default,” so without positive action on a provider’s part, a name change will propagate. But as I responded to him—and as MapQuest and OpenStreetMap demonstrate—it’s not automatic and remains a choice: how GNIS data is used is up to the providers. But Google trips over itself to make the change, and eventually Apple will, too.
Unless John Ternus surprises everyone. I’m not holding my breath.