Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from.
And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...
GNIS, Geographic Names Information System
(Which still shows Lake Ontario for me as I write this. The body of water along the US's southern coast is Gulf of America however.)
I see this on the top bar
https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...
GNIS renders their own static map tiles, so it may take a while for the update to be reflected on the map itself.
No they don't. People can, and should, call things what they want without deference to government overreach.
For once I'm posting about this in a forum where I can reasonably expect that most users will understand the technical difficulties that would arise if Google wanted to avoid using the new names.
The average person seems to believe that Google can change the toponyms back to Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario as easily as taking down a road sign and nailing up a different one.
I am curious though - is it convention to leave the data as is, or is it illegal to modify it?
Regardless, itll just be changed back in 2 years; as long as I can type "lake ontario" and get directed to Lake Ontario, I do not care at all what the gov database calls it currently.
Why do you expect meek reaction in a rename like this? What is eye rolling over reacting to this particular rename?
Google should override it but I don’t expect them to, because theyre selfish and suck. Only thing to do is win elections.
Given the First Amendment, it's in no way illegal for individuals or corporations to use whatever place names they want. But if yout maps platform is essentially wedded to a government database and is designed entirely around the use of that database, using different place names is much, much more difficult.