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, 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 US president’s order affects the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which ⁠sets the standards for official US maps. It does not have any impact on Canadian naming conventions or how ‌the ‌rest ​of the world refers to the lake.“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, 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.The White House, Canadian prime minister ‌Mark Carney’s office and Ontario premier Doug Ford’s ​office did not immediately comment on Google’s decision. [ The Irish Times view on Donald Trump and Lake Ontario: what’s in a name?Opens in new window ]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.Carney immediately rejected the lake’s name change on Thursday. 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.A sign for Lake Ontario at the Fifty Point Conservation Area in Grimsby. Photograph: Keito Newman/The Canadian Press via AP In Ontario, Ford on Saturday unveiled a large lakeside sign that reads, “Lake Ontario: Now and Always,” in both English and French.Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbour involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.On Saturday, the US president raised the volume again by resorting to the kind of AI-generated imagery for which he has shown a penchant.He posted one such video of an army of Canada geese with Trump-like blond hair firing rifles in protection of Lake America. He published another of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America while he danced in his distinctive way to a soundtrack of the Village People hit YMCA, which he has incorporated into his public appearances for years.Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said Trump was trying to rename the lake because Ontario and Canada were “standing up for ourselves”, and he argued the name would outlast the president.“Long after president Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario,” Ford said in a video posted on social media.He appeared on Sunday on the ABC News programme This Week and remarked that Trump’s Lake Ontario renaming order was like “something out of Saturday Night Live,’” the famous NBC sketch comedy show.Lake Ontario and the skyline of Toronto, Canada. Photograph: Eugen Sakhnenko/The New York Times