It’s not that MapQuest won’t change it, it’s that the name hasn’t changed.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the United States can't change the name of a body of water that's shared between multiple countries. If it's not that, it still hasn't gotten any sort of congressional approval.
Edit: Lake Michigan is the only one that's fully within the US. The others are patrolled by both the US Coast Guard and the Canadian Coast Guard, both have the ability to arrest anyone on either side of the border. The state governments that border the lakes have some power over them, but they're held in trust for public use. The International Joint Commission resolves any disputes regarding them. I'm not quite sure what would have to go into changing the name of Lake Ontario, but it would at least require Canadian approval and US congressional approval, perhaps even approval from the state of New York and the province of Ontario. Oh yeah, this is also completely stupid and should under no circumstances actually happen.

Gonna be really hard to get Canadian congressional approval as we have no congress

I'm well aware. I meant approval from both the congress of the United States and the government of Canada. I just wrote it a little awkwardly.

I know, just messing

Well you guys better get right on that soon cause we need your congressional approval ASAP!

I’m pretty sure the United States can’t change the name of a body of water that’s shared between multiple countries.

Someone forgot about the GuLf Of AmErIcA already

Didn’t forget. Name never changed

Except that it was for over 300 million people

No it wasn’t. Executive orders don’t have the authority to change the names of jack shit.

Even post offices need a fucking Congressional bill to change their name.

I didn't forget, but I'm pretty sure Trump has. I don't think he's talked about it in quite a while. I've never heard anybody actually call it the Gulf of America, and I live in the Deep South. I'm not sure it's even used by the departments in the executive branch. This will probably be a similar situation.

I see it on maps sometimes (fucking Google being Google), so it irritates me whenever I run across it

That sounds nice.

If Trump really wants to turn the screws, he can make it a requirement of federal contracts that all contractors use maps that comply with his infantile demmands.

I think you’re kind of living in a pre-Trump reality where laws and procedures means something. It’s a super bad idea to feel comfortable with this administration because something they want to do is technically illegal. Everything is up for grabs right now.

I partly just thought that going over what it would require could be interesting. You're right, he can try to make contractors do that. But that doesn't mean that citizens of either country are actually going to honor the name. Sure, Google and Apple will change their maps to suck him off, but nearly nobody is ever going to unironically call it Lake America. I live in Alabama, a deeply conservative state that borders the Gulf of Mexico. Even here, nobody calls it the Gulf of America. Odds are, he'll forget about this shit just as quickly.

Technically, there is no lake Michigan, only lake Michigan-Huron.

Interesting. So why exactly is a distinction made? Some political reason from the past?

It’s simply convention. Although the Straits of Mackinac are 5 miles wide at the narrowest point, in relation to the size of the lakes it makes a significant demarcation. Sort of like the Straits of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

But Goog map added “Gulf of America” under the Gulf of Mexico while MapQuest retain the Gulf of Mexico, so even when it has changed for USA MapQuest basically saying they won’t follow.

Again, not that they won’t follow, it’s that the name hasn’t changed. Trump can do what he likes and he can probably force the executive branch to use the name in official documentation, but other than that this stunt means nothing

And Google are a bunch of evil techdicks so of course they suck up to the orange fuhrer.

Hi, I work in the map industry. We generally don’t get to decide what names to use for features. We apply what the local official name is (to simplify). That’s why if you’re in country A, feature X might be named something different than if you’re in country B. You can imagine this would (and has) caused many conflicts around the world if we didn’t display the local official name. (Switch your region via VPN and you can see this in action)

If Google renamed it to Gulf of America, no Google didn’t, not really … They just inserted the new official name for that feature according to GNIS.

Meaning if I visit the lake they won’t change all the signage?

Well I mean I can guarantee they won’t be changed around some parts of it lol. What kind of dumbass question is this? You think changing a sign makes something real?

The name of something is not an inherent property of that thing. All names are assigned.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Ok?

The distinction is that before Trump decided to hijack it for political purposes, the US government put a lot of thought and work into official names.

For big things like the gulf of Mexico, or lake Ontario, there shouldn’t be a lot of confusion. But what about the little creek by your house? A series of inlets on a coastline? What if you have dozens of places with the same name; how do you differentiate? What if you have regional local names that differ from the name that outsiders use? What if you have competing names in general parlance? When you type it into a gps, where will it send you?

The U.S. Board of Geographical Names handled all these issues and more, and had been a trusted authority on place names, that mapmakers, businesses, and other governments all trusted to do a good job.

Still today, you can check out the GNIS and find out all kinds of cool stuff. Try searching for “Sugarloaf” to find all the mountains people named after a common thing, or “Denali” or “Washington”; you can find a lot of cool stuff on here, including alternate names for places. (https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis)

It is disgusting that the republicans are destroying years and years of slowly building trust and doing good work that helps all Americans because (check notes) it would be funny if he decreed the name were stupider?

Good, I fucking hate google maps, it’s a shit product. They don’t tell you the name of roads, making you zoom way way in to see the name, which they might not show you anyway. One would think tapping on that road would be a good way to bring it’s name into service, but no, fuck you.

Fuck Google. The only thing I can’t quit completely is youtube, for now. But I never log in, and never respect their age control bullshit. You ask me to verify my age, I will either find the information elsewhere, or not see it at all. Fuck Google.

It does matter. If entire generation of Americans grow up with Gulf of America and Lake America, that will be the name of Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario in the US.

That seems like primarily a US problem

Please change it. I have more information than the public does on the Epstein files. Change it to the lake that divides the child rapist protection agencies from the child rapist enabling agencies. Canadian conservatives are just as involved.

I’d be ok if they did this.

I’m partial to “Child Lakist”

Just wanted to check…

Thanks, was wondering the same

Nice 🙂

But does Dave make it to Jack’s BBQ?

You know, I never really considered automatic anti-vandalism mechanisms we have in place on OpenStreetMap, but they surely exist.

All that to say I think we’re good on OSM too. lol

It has been added to OpenStreetMap. It says official_name:en-US = Lake America

It’s not the name that is likely to show when viewing the map, but it’s in the data.

it’s in the data

Correct, because that’s what official_name means. The US government, one of two countries encircling it, officially calls it “Lake America”. That’s why it’s official_name:en-US specifically, not official_name=. The name= key, the “primary name of the feature in the real world”, remains and will remain “Lake Ontario”.

It’s not the name that is likely to show when viewing the map

I’ll correct you and say that there’s no “likely” about it: it’s not the name that will be shown when viewing the map. That’s the name= key, which is “Lake Ontario”.

It depends on which map you are looking at. Anyone could take the OSM data and create a map that prefers to show official_name:en-US, when available.

Yeah, and?

1. If you actually edit OSM, you know there’s zero compelling reason to make an application that prefers official_name:en-us. Want to know how I know? Because instead of wasting my time making something up to be outraged at, I went and looked up how often this key shows up. It’s six (it shows five, but it hasn’t updated for Lake Ontario yet). In the entire world among billions of key uses, this one is used on six objects. This will not ever happen; it’s complete nonsense.

Even if it were made (it will not be),

2. Nobody would use it. Literally what on Earth usefulness could it possibly have within the already niche ecosystem that is OpenStreetMap? My dude, my guy, if they were targeting bullshit names Trump made up with an EO, they could just soft fork an existing OSM application and then hardcode in “Gulf of America” and “Lake America”.

And most importantly,

3. It doesn’t matter. That’s what the official_name key exists for – to distinguish it from the name people actually use. That’s why it’s a separate key to begin with.

You’re complaining about OpenStreetMap being accurate, and in order to do that, you have to invent some fever dream application that nobody would ever create and nobody would ever use – and that even were they to create it, they could’ve accomplished it more easily by just hardcoding six values.

“When available”. lol, lmao even

so annoying the local news mentions. this only applies in within the boarders of amerca. no. no it doesn’t. executive orders are directions to the federal government. Its basicaly a memo to the agencies that they have to do that but no state or local government or private individual need follow it and I imagine most federal workers just avoid dealing with something now with the name of the lake. Once again I can’t wait for the next president to make an executive order changing the name of donald trump.

You assume we will ever have another president.

But if we are allowed an election I’d vote for someone who made that part of their platform.

You’re waiting to be “allowed”?

AND WHY WOULD THEY

I wish more people took this shit as seriously as it deserves rather than making snarky jokes about it. This shit ain’t funny.

¿Por qué no los dos?

Take it seriously but also ridicule it.

100% I’m sick and tired of these news outlets immediately bending over for the cheato to say the name is officially changed. The office of the president of the united states does not grant the power to rename international bodies of water or the fucking kennedy center.

Can we PLEASE stop treating this fat fucking loser like a 5 year old pretending to be a dinosaur or superman and treat him like the 80 year old grifter, chomo, felon, national embarrassment he actually fucking is.

Mapquest making Google and Apple maps look like simps.

Lake Epstein is a option

Is Trump really so uncreative that every name change he orders is just “replace x with America”?

His professor at Wharton,

"Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!”

… and now trump has dementia to boot !

Is this a real question?

Nah, not really

Well, it shows he doesn’t think he could get away with renaming them after himself.

Is mapquest any good these days.

I see it used somewhat frequently on other companies maps for things like “here’s where to find us” or things of that nature.

Great way to get people talking about Mapquest. Do they still give you printable instructions?

Yarp. Verified a moment ago. It’s still easy as pasta too.

“Lake eh”

Haha.

Lakema…

What’s lakema?

Lake Ma Ballz

LMAO

The king is mad

Huh, I didn’t notice at the time but they never gave in on the Gulf of Mexico either.

Google, of course, immediately bowed to Fascism for both