US President Donald Trump‘s attempt to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” has run into resistance from an unlikely source: MapQuest. The online mapping service predates Google Maps by nearly a decade. MapQuest’s X account recently shared a screenshot of the body of water, saying: “We’re not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure.” The post received over 70,000 likes. Meanwhile, none of the account’s 24 posts in July got more than two. The company also built a tool letting users generate their own joke screenshots with alternate labels for the lake, including one reading “Lake Are We Doing This Again?”In 1996, MapQuest became the first major consumer-facing commercial mapping platform before Google Maps. AOL bought it for $1.1 billion four years later, at the height of the dot-com boom. However, by 2008, MapQuest fell behind Google Maps. It was sold to System1, an online advertising firm, in 2019. MapQuest calls itself “the OG of online mapping” in its X bio. Google and Apple have not yet said whether they will change the name of Lake Ontario on their map services.
Eric Trump weighs in
The president’s son responded to MapQuest’s post on X. “Shocking to see you’re still alive,” Eric Trump wrote. “I thought the iPhone 3 took you out 15 years ago.”MapQuest has also made a site that lets users pick their own name for the body of water and generate a joke screenshot. The most-liked replies included “Lake of Hormuz” and “Lake Gulf of Mexico.”
A repeat of the Gulf of Mexico dispute
Trump’s “Lake America” order resembles one he signed at the start of his term in January 2025, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” At the time, MapQuest similarly released a tool that let users generate a screenshot with a name of their choosing.Google Maps and Apple Maps label the basin “Gulf of America” for US users; however, international users still see “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).” Trump’s executive orders compel federal agencies to use the new names, but not private companies or other entities.
Why Trump wants to rename the lake
The president wants to rechristen Lake Ontario because trade tensions between the US and Canada have reignited.Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes, straddling the US-Canada border with Toronto on its northern shore and New York State to the south. The word Ontario has Indigenous origins and means “great lake” or “beautiful water.”Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected Trump’s name change in an X post. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always,” he wrote.
Trade tensions behind the dispute
The spat kicked off when Canada walked away from trade talks last week. Then last week, Trump’s 50% tariffs took effect on some Canadian products, ranging from whisky and hockey sticks to dairy, clothing, and lumber. He has also threatened to impose the levy on cars and steel.Canada announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% this week, targeting key industries like steel, dairy, and agricultural equipment. They’re set to take effect September 8.Ontario Premier Doug Ford has separately barred American companies from provincial contracts worth roughly $30 billion annually and cancelled the province’s contract with Starlink, moves he says will stay in place until US tariffs are lifted.
