Lake Ontario (“Lake America”) – Tagging general discussion

Here we go again…

A few hours ago, US President Trump signed an Executive Order ordering GNIS to be updated to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America”, and it seems the update has already taken effect (although to note, the GNIS entry cites “Executive Order 14420”, but that is in fact the executive order on “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans”; this new executive order has not been officially published in the Federal Register yet and thus does not yet have a number).

Precedent from the Gulf of Mexico/“Gulf of America” discussion as well as accepted OSM convention would suggest that once GNIS is updated (which it appears it is already), official_name:en-US=* should be added/changed to Lake America, but name=* left as is unless and until common usage on the ground on both sides of the border shifts to prefer the “Lake America” name (which seems very unlikely).

So far, the Lake Ontario relation (1206310) as well as at least one other nearby feature has already had its name=* changed once, though it was swiftly reverted and changed to official_name:en-US=* instead, which is the current status quo as of this writing. I expect to see that happen a lot more in the near future, in line with what happened to the Gulf of Mexico, so good to get on top of this now.

Therefore, following a discussion with other local mappers on the OSM-US Slack and a request from @iandees , I created this thread for discussion with the relevant communities to confirm this consensus still applies in this case, and a thread that can be cited and mappers can be directed to documenting the resulting consensus. I’ve also pinged and briefed the DWG on the issue so they are aware. Once decided, it seems worth updating the Lake Ontario OSM wiki page (which was previously proposed for deletion) to document this consensus, as done on the Gulf of Mexico’s page.

Thanks for dealing with this issue at this early stage.

We are all leaning back, getting some popcorn and waiting for the edit war to start. The poor Golf of Mexico has undergone 19 edits in the first 16 years of OSM and another 127 since January 2025 so let’s see what happens to Lake Ontario.

Thanks!

Therefore, following a discussion with other local mappers on the OSM-US Slack

Anything of note for this community thread outside of what you already wrote? I got no account on the OSM-US Slack, and the archive link only works if you have an account, unfortunately.

Not really, just the jokes and groans you’d expect, consensus on the official_name:en-US=* approach discussed above and the request to create this thread.

@Glassman did mention just now that they’ve put a monitor on the relation so they get pinged if there are any changes, and that official_name:en_US=* makes sense as with the Gulf of Mexico. And @SomeoneElse just wrote me via email that the Gulf of Mexico discussion indeed essentially applies here as well. So sounds like the DWG are well on top of things and hopefully there shouldn’t be a need for another long discussion here

This is certainly some welcome news to spice things up on OpenStreetMap.

It looks like the “Strait of Hormuz” may soon be renamed the “Strait of America,” and “Greenland” might become “Americaland” as well. Since we can probably expect more of these official-name surprises in the future, I’d like to propose a new tag: official_name:Trump=*.

The views of the individual US states may, of course, differ somewhat from those of that one particular person, so I would advise against introducing an official_name:en-US=* tag.

We’re only having this discussion because the person in question has what Teddy Roosevelt termed the “bully pulpit”, as well as his signature on the Interior Secretary’s employment agreement.

We’ve been using official_name:en-US=* on the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) and Denali (Mount McKinley) since January 2025. To the extent that an individual U.S. state can be thanked for their attention to this matter, we use official_name:en-u-sd-usxy=*, where xy is the FIPS 5-2 alpha code for the state.

So for the less technically-literate, is official_name:en-US=* just changing visibility of the displayed name in the US?

Until a renderer uses it—which currently isn’t the case—nobody will see it. At least not on a map. The reasoning here is mostly to still have it searchable under that name.

ETA: See its wiki entry, specifically this part:

This key does not override name:en=* or name:en-US=*. Few if any renderersconsume official_name=* or any of its subkeys; in practice, the purpose of this key is for geocoders to find the feature when a user searches for the official name.

Most certainly. I find myself wondering what people in the town of Ontario, NY think. Perhaps their views are similar to this:

Surely this only affects the part of the lake within the United States?

This is so on-theme.

Nothing suggests that the U.S. federal government intends to limit the name’s definition to the southern side. It’s kind of like how several countries in Europe quickly ruled on the official name of the Gulf of Mexico last year in response to the earlier executive order. Those rulings didn’t apply to only the parts of the Gulf that fall within their maritime limits, so we tagged the overall waterbody with official_name:*=*.

Fitting to this topic, I saw this post on Mastodon

Maybe we’ll get one for the Lake Ontario as well

Already released: Name Lake Ontario – MapQuest

It’s probably apparent to most readers, but maybe not so clear for our US members. Trumps renaming obsession applies only within US jurisdiction. So changing any name other than name:en-US is vandalism and should have appropriate consequences.

That apart, it is a temporary issue anyway.

Edit: strictly speaking, even that isn’t correct, as mentioned here, because “Lake America” isn’t a translation. So, official_name:en-US it is.

Good grief! How many different things does Trump need named after himself? He not only has renamed the Gulf of… America. And he’s renamed an airport, “President Donald J. Trump International Airport” and now this? Yikes!

A continent might come handy

This is very clear to us US members, and it’s even more narrowly scoped than this. It applies only to things the US federal government directly controls. So mainly paperwork and digital media produced by federal agencies. This may be surprising to other parts of the world, but the powers of our state governments override those of the federal government in many domestic areas. The US shoreline of Lake Ontario lies entirely within the State of New York and it’s governor has stated that “New York won’t be calling it that”.

Thanks to New York that respect the First Nations. Wikipedia reports that the first mention of the name Ontario was in 1641.

Erie and Michigan names also originate from first nations and Huron refers to these nations.

No offense intended. Hopefully the fear of an edit war is unfounded then.