On 27 August 2026, Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America”.
It’s the sort of headline that makes you read it twice. This lands on our desk here because every Lake Ontario map we’ve printed says the same.
Therefore, our answer is simple: nothing is changing.
Our Lake Ontario map keeps its name. This is why.
What actually happened
The order followed a trade row with Canada that had built for weeks. Talks broke down; as a result, Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on a range of Canadian goods. Canada hit back with tariffs of its own. The lake, shown in the Lake Ontario map, got caught in the crossfire.
Trump directed the Secretary of the Interior to work with the US Board on Geographic Names over the following thirty days. The GNIS, the government’s place name database, was updated to ‘Lake America’ on the US side before the thirty day process finished.
Not everyone in Washington was thrilled about the wider trade fight behind it. Republican Senator Susan Collins came out against the tariffs, warning they’d push up prices for ordinary Americans. It’s a reminder that this whole episode has as much to do with trade politics as it does with geography.
This isn’t a one-off either
Renaming things by executive order has become something of a pattern. On his first day back in office, Trump signed orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He also restored Mount McKinley to Denali, Alaska’s highest peak.
The Indigenous name had carried official status since 2015. Both changes stuck within US federal usage. Mexico never adopted Gulf of America. Many Alaskans and Indigenous groups fought for decades to recognise Denali but pushed back against losing it again.
Lake Ontario is the latest name to face this pattern. Moreover, if the pattern holds, it won’t be the last.
A Lake Ontario map needs a name both countries agree on
A Lake Ontario map needs a name.
Both countries agree on it.
Here’s the bit that matters most for us as a mapmaker. Lake Ontario isn’t American. It’s shared. Moreover, the lake sits on the border between the United States and Canada. Canada wants absolutely nothing to do with the new name.
Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that Lake Ontario is older than either country. The name predates the Confederation of Canada and the American Declaration of Independence. Ontario’s Premier put it bluntly: the lake is Lake Ontario. To Canadians and the rest of the world, it is Lake Ontario now and forever. When one half of a shared border rejects a name outright, that name hasn’t actually changed. It has simply been relabelled in one filing cabinet.
Legally, this doesn’t reach us anyway
We’ve had a few people ask whether we’re taking some kind of stand by keeping the old name.
We’re not, not really, because there’s nothing to defy.
Legal experts have been clear that a US executive order can tell federal agencies what to call a lake. But it has no power over other countries, international cartography, or private businesses.
So a Lake Ontario map from MapShop isn’t a political statement. It’s just an accurate one. Atlases, geographic authorities and mapmakers outside the US still use the name, and so do we.
A good map has to still make sense in ten years
Nobody buys a map poster for this week’s news cycle. People buy them to hang on a wall, to give as presents, to keep for years. A name that got changed because of a tariff dispute is exactly the kind of thing that could just as easily get changed back, or argued over again, the next time the political weather shifts. Printing “Lake America” onto a poster today risks making it look dated, or simply wrong, within a year or two. A proper Lake Ontario map should hold up regardless of who’s in office, and that only works if we stick with the name that’s actually stood the test of time.
The name has a longer history than the argument
Ontario comes from a Huron-Iroquoian word. Usually translated as ‘great lake’ or ‘beautiful water,’ it has been in use for centuries. Long before the United States or Canada existed as we know them today. That’s part of what draws us to mapmaking in the first place. The fact that place names carry real history, not just coordinates.
Moreover, a name that old doesn’t get rewritten. Because of a row over trade tariffs, we’re not about to be the ones who start. It’s exactly the kind of history a good Lake Ontario map should reflect, not paper over.
Why this matters to us
Accuracy is the whole point of what we do. When someone buys a map from MapShop, they trust us to get the coastline right. They also rely on accurate contours and correct names. If we started swapping names to match the news that month, that trust wouldn’t last long.
Frankly, we wouldn’t deserve it. Maps are meant to be a fixed point, something you can rely on. They should not be rewritten every time a government changes its mind or picks a fight with a neighbour. That would undermine trust. We keep maps stable, even when politics shift.
That’s true whether it’s a lake, a mountain, or a stretch of coastline. Our job is to reflect the world as it’s actually recognised, by the people who live there, by international mapmakers, and by the weight of history behind a name, not by whichever announcement happened most recently. So our Great Lakes map, our North America map, and every Lake Ontario map in the shop will carry on showing the name that’s been there all along.
Additionally, if you’d like a Lake Ontario map for your own wall, choose a version drawn with the name that’s stood for centuries rather than the one that made headlines this August, and discover why traditional cartography remains meaningful to many collectors.
