U.S. President Donald Trump has asked Apple to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” on its maps app, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday. The request extends a renaming effort that already reached Google Maps over the weekend.
Burgum told Fox’s “Mornings with Maria” program that Trump “reached out to Apple directly.” He said he was confident the “Lake America” label could appear on the company’s platform soon. Apple did not immediately comment. The lake sits between the U.S. state of New York and Canada’s Ontario province.
The move follows an executive order Trump signed Friday directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, or GNIS, the federal database of official place names. The renaming is one of the latest steps in his trade dispute with Canada, which has brought higher tariffs on both sides of the border.
Google implemented the change first. Over the weekend it rolled out the new label for U.S. users, citing Trump’s order and its existing practice of using names assigned by GNIS. “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,” the company said Saturday.
Google noted the update follows its long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary by country. The same split-display approach would likely apply to any change Apple makes, keeping the original name visible to Canadian and international users.
Trump cannot compel Canada to adopt the new name. Officials across the border quickly rejected the idea. The leader of the Seneca Nation in upstate New York also criticized the move.
Apple has not indicated whether or when it will alter the label. The Interior Department’s update to the federal naming database governs how U.S. platforms that rely on GNIS present the lake, but each company decides independently how to reflect it.