The Lake America name change signed by President Donald Trump by executive order is forcing globe and map makers to choose between following Washington’s lead, deferring to international bodies, or simply ignoring the directive altogether, with no obvious consensus emerging across the industry.
Trump renamed Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ by executive order, more than a year after renaming the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America’ in January 2025. As Al Jazeera notes, Lake Ontario sits on the border between the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and the US state of New York to the south, which makes a unilateral American renaming immediately complicated: the lake belongs, geographically and politically, to two countries.
The Lake America name change and the problem of international acceptance
Joseph C. Wright, the CEO of Illinois-based Replogle Globes, says his company has navigated sweeping changes to the world map across its 96-year history, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union to African nations adopting new names. The Lake America name change is different in kind, he argues, because the political clock is visibly ticking. ‘The political uncertainty for such changes affects the timing of purchases,’ Wright said, ‘as a change in presidential administrations in a little less than two and a half years might result in a change back to the previous names, or lead to other additional changes.’
International acceptance compounds the commercial problem. After Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico in January 2025, the UK, Mexico, and China were among the countries to reject ‘Gulf of America,’ and the change triggered a legal dispute between Mexico and Google. Wright expects a similar pattern to follow this latest order. ‘The issue of international acceptance is also a factor, as some nations may not accept it,’ he said. ‘We sell globes worldwide.’
Adding a further layer of complication, the AP News has reported that the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), which works to ensure the world’s seas, oceans, and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly and also names some of them, counts both the United States and Canada among its members. A body with that mandate and that membership roster is unlikely to rubber-stamp a renaming one member state applies unilaterally to a shared border lake.
Globe makers weigh the Lake America name change against their own standards
Chris Adams, the founder of UK-based Lander & May Globemakers, is taking the hardest line of any maker quoted so far. The Lake America name change would have ‘absolutely no effect upon us,’ he told Business Insider. ‘We do constantly update our globes to include name changes but take our lead from the United Nations, not the whims of a mad man. The Gulf of Mexico, Lake Ontario will remain thus until we have it on good authority.’
Paul Norrell, the owner of Seattle-based 1-World Globes & Maps, which has been in business for about 27 years, is handling the question differently. Because the company prints wall maps to order, customers can request labels such as ‘Gulf of America’ and ‘Lake America’ at no extra charge, though internationally accepted names remain the default. Norrell said his company is not aware of any globe makers that have updated their Gulf of Mexico labelling for world globes. In states like Florida, where schools and state agencies are required to use maps and globes carrying ‘Gulf of America’ rather than ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ some educators may be opting to ‘wait it out’ before purchasing, he said.
There is, Norrell added, a commercial upside to the controversy. ‘For us, the downstream effect is mostly positive. We get people thinking about maps, we get to inform people about maps, and the news cycle gives us an opportunity to talk about maps to the mainstream public.’
Digital maps meanwhile are showing what divided sovereignty looks like in practice. Google has reflected the Lake America name change in line with its long-standing policy of using official government naming sources, according to the BBC, meaning US viewers now see ‘Lake America’ while Canadian viewers continue to see ‘Lake Ontario’, a split screen that illustrates exactly why Replogle’s Wright sees international acceptance as the crux of the matter. MapQuest has refused to make the change at all. Apple did not immediately respond to questions about whether it would update its maps.
The IHO’s involvement, or lack of it, may ultimately determine how durable any of these cartographic choices turn out to be. Until a multilateral body formally adopts the new name, globe makers with international customer bases have a principled, commercially defensible reason to sit on their hands, and several of them are doing exactly that.