Trumps’s order affects the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which sets the standards for official U.S. maps.
Google Maps has changed the name of “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” for U.S. users to reflect President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the lake, according to a Google statement.
Trump announced on Thursday that he was changing the name of the smallest of the five Great Lakes, part of an escalating trade feud with Canada that has prompted the two countries to impose reciprocal tariffs on billions of dollars in goods.
The president’s order affects the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which sets the standards for official U.S. maps. It does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake.
Check out CoMaps. It relies on OpenStreetMap, which also has the correct name. Main downsides are a lack of business info, so it’s more difficult/impossible to find somewhere to eat, and no traffic data.
The best feature is that it’s completely offline, you download everything to your device as you desire. No stupid squares to select and download like in Google Maps. I have the entire US on my phone, and don’t need internet to navigate using that data.
I just downloaded CoMaps today to replace Google Maps as my default. One unexpected benefit is that they mapped the driveway to my apartment building and now directions lead to it rather than the street address.
I think that’s just good luck though as the driveway happened to end up closer to the centroid than any other driving paths. I see an open issue to use marked “entrance” points for routing which could allow people to specify where the right place to target would be.