Google Maps has changed the name of “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” for US users to reflect US President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the ‌lake.

Trump announced last Thursday that he was changing the name ‌of the smallest of the five Great Lakes, as part of an escalating trade feud with Canada ‌that has prompted the two countries to impose reciprocal tariffs on billions of dollars in goods.

Trump’s order affects the US Geographic Names Information System, which sets the standards for official US maps.

But it has no impact on Canadian naming conventions or how the ‌rest of ‌the world ⁠refers to the lake.

“People using maps in the US will see ‘Lake America’, those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario’, and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names,” Google said in a blog post issued ⁠on Saturday.

Google’s naming conventions for the big lake. Image: Google

The White House, Carney’s office and ‌the office of Ontario Premier Doug Ford had no immediate comments on Google’s decision.

Google Maps made a similar change ​to the ‌Gulf of Mexico last year, labelling it the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order on ​his first day in office renaming the body of water.

Last Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney immediately rejected the lake’s name change.

Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul of New ​York, ​which shares a long border ​with Canada, declared that “New York won’t be calling ‌it that”, while Phil Scott, the Republican governor of neighbouring Vermont, called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media.

On Saturday, Ford unveiled a large lakeside sign that reads, “Lake Ontario: Now and Always”, in English and French.

“President Trump can call ​it whatever he wants, but I can tell you, the rest of the world ​will always call it ⁠Lake Ontario,” Ford said.

Ford has also described Trump’s renaming of the waterway as “like something out of Saturday Night Live”.

“No one’s going to call it Lake America,” he told US TV. “It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue to be Lake Ontario.”

Late late week, the Seneca Nation — one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy — urged Trump to rescind the name change.

Senaca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said it violated the terms of a 1794 treaty signed with US president George Washington that laid out the Senaca Nation’s boundaries as “beginning on Lake Ontario”.

“The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca said.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has also denounced the name change. He pointed out the Wendat Nation’s word to describe the lake, Ontari’io, “appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’ “.

-with AAP