Google Maps changed to show Lake Ontario as Lake America | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps changed to show Lake Ontario as Lake America

cnn.com

While they show Lake Ontario (Lake America) in the rest of the world, I would like to suggest that they apply a more patronizing treatment to the alias:

Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

The quotes add a certain.. je ne sais quoi.

I think overall it's not Google's job to decide the names of things. Half of America voted for the circus, enjoy!

If I'm swimming in Lake America, in America, greatest country in the world, I don't want to hear this "Je ne sais quoi" - Keep it in American, buddy.

I'm not your buddy, pal.

Well technically less than a quarter voted for it, but fair enough.

It's probably a good representative sample. So I do believe that roughly 50% of the US population supports or would vote for Trump.

Inside the US. In the rest of the world, it shows the correct name.

True for now, but here in the UK I still see 'Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)'

The correct name depends on your context. I know it’s unpopular but it’s true.

True!

And the correct name in all contexts that matter is "Lake Ontario".

It's almost as if people don't know that "Ontario" is not a Canadian name, it's a native American one, and the province is named after the lake, not the other way around.

It was called "Lake Ontario" before Canada or the US even existed.

I completely understand and respect that , but the reality is that the U.S. governments opinion matters, even if you don’t like the leadership.

One thing that does seem to be incorrect is that Google has a single name on the lake - Lake America, when surely that only applies to the American half. The US-Canadian border runs down the middle of the lake, so unless I'm missing something Trump's renaming only applies to the American half, and the correct way for Google to show it would be with different names for each half of the lake.

That's ridiculous! How do you rename half of a lake!

I say that there are two lakes. It remains for future generations to decide how the two lakes are apportioned. Perhaps each of them are coterminous, with the same boundaries, size and volume, but one is named "Lake America" and one is not. One is a lake in US waters, and the other is in some foreign country.

Perhaps of the two lakes, they are split in twain, and there is an international border running through the middle of these two distinct bodies of water. Perhaps vessels will littorally obtain right of passage in international waters, and undergo customs inspections before they can cross over the somewhat amorphous border between Lake Ontario and Lake America, and vice versa.

That's not really how local naming works. I call Germany Germany but the Germans call it Deutschland. There's not two Germany's, there's just one and I have a different name for it. It really doesn't matter if a geographic object is completely inside, partially inside, or completely outside a country's borders, they have an official or de facto name for it that could differ from what you call it.

1) Whoooooosh!

2) You really had to choose that country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany

If Google maps, or anyone else, is just going to label things in other countries according to the whims of Trump, then where does it end?

If Trump tells Google, and spends taxpayer money, to "officially rename" Ottawa itself "Poopietown", then should they do it?

Maybe we need a constitutional amendment to remove the president's power over place names, given that the founding fathers only considered a malevolent president, not one with the brain of a 5 year old.

You joke, but of course that is exactly the direction we're heading in, where a previously friendly border, both on land and in the water, becomes a hostile one where full border formalities do apply.

I remember years ago driving across the border at Niagara Falls, and just being waved though, no passport required, when I said I was just on a day trip.

I think this is a great startup idea and unique opportunity - create Google Maps competitor on promise to have Lake Ontario and Gulf of Mexico named correctly, along with a promise to ignore other possible renamings in future. :)

We have MapQuest for this!

It's not so bad. Schoolchildren merely have to change the acronym they use to memorize the Great Lakes from HOMES to SHAME.

Edit: It seems others have figured this out before I did.

First place I saw it so enjoy your upvote!

This is a good moment to remind everyone that the USA is not "America". Not even North America. Just a part of it.

While true, that charitable interpretation of this renaming is not appropriate to apply here.

Absolutely. My point was not to agree with the new name, but to say that USA should not call themselves America (which is not just arrogant, but plainly incorrect)

Thats right, we can all share in this new naming. From Canada in the north to Chile in the south

Don’t do evil…

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947

Google is a perfect example of the banality of evil.

This isn't really on Google. Countries disagree on how things should be named. Google sources the US centric view from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

Blame the person causing the GNIS updates.

Blame the person at Google who chose to source from GNIS, without edits.

So you prefer google to be the arbiter of what are official names within each country?

I think the US administration name change is childish, dumb and short-sighted, but if the authority of geographical names in an area designates it as such then I think it should show as such within maps within that area, at least as long as the clarification is readily shown. The same already happens for things like "Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)" or "Myanmar (Burma)".

I guess the question comes down to: do you want google to show the map that your current locality decides to be their interpretation or do you want google to be the arbiter of what a global real map is? Or is there a third alternative that I'm not aware of? (BTW the UN is not a solution to arbiter every countries and languages terms for every country/area/city/lake/ocean/etc.)

> So you prefer google to be the arbiter of what are official names within each country?

No, but they are certainly the arbiter of what names they use on the maps they produce.

So you want them to take a political stance on every naming and territorial dispute?

I wasn't asserting that, I was only pointing out that they can call any feature anything they like on their own maps.

But no, I don't want them to take a political stance on every naming dispute. In this case, however, when the "dispute" is between a clearly incompetent president and the nation he presides over, yes, seeing companies standing up against the madness would be welcome.

That is taking a political stance, which also means that everytime that they accept a change will also be implicitly a political stance.

It was a very reasonable decision when it was made around 2008.

Do you really expect a US based company to go to legal war with the US government over something like this? Because there would 100% be repercussions it they did.

Is there a legal requirement that non-governmental entities source their mapping data from official U.S. government sources?

I don't think that matters with the current administration.

I think that's part of what is frustrating to so many people? Google isn't a small business, and has the legal resources to at least fight back if they were challenged by the administration. Any such challenge would likely fall apart in trial, but even if it didn't Google would have at least challenged the absurdity of it.

The person responsible for the GNIS corruption and the leadership of Google are in essence conjoined twins. The tech oligarchs are not going to make decisions based on interests that aren’t aligned directly with their personal enrichment; and the GNIS Corrupter-in-Chief wields such personal interests rather effectively.

> This isn't really on Google

Yes, because it’s so agonizingly difficult to `s/Lake America/Lake Ontario/g` in a data feed. Truly the engineering feat of our time.

My statement was by no means limited to GNIS updates, that is just a small downstream consequence of a much deeper dysfunction.

For about the third time this morning (sigh)

Google Maps users, please report this aberration.

You need to be logged in to report it.

This is not a case of vandalism by other users. Google made this change because they use the names officially recognised by the government of the US.

It is definitely a case of vandalism.

The government doesn't get to name geographic features.

See https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/what-geogr...

Who gets to name them?

> The OpenStreetMap community operates under the “on the ground” principle, recording what is actually currently used in a particular area, giving preeminence to data collected in situ.

https://osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesI...

Private entities get to use whatever name they want. In this case, there is the option to use the longstanding name that matches the one used by the other neighboring territory. Or to have a wait period after the name is changed unilaterally by executive order, because it'd be silly to change it back and forth. Or to put "a.k.a..." after it. Or to wait for the relevant government to update its own map and geographic names database first (https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc... is not yet updated as of now). Or to wait until local signage can be updated so it mostly matches the map (though I don't think Rochester will be in a rush to do this).

Well Derry/Londonderry is officially called Londonderry, but Irish republicans didn't like the London link so call(ed) it Derry. So during the troubles it was a thing to refer to is as Derry/Londonderry.

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