Lake America

I have already shared my views on name changes. In case you haven't seen my views, let me provide a quick summary. I hate the idea of name changes as a knee-jerk reaction to current events, but I don't believe that names must stick once they're established regardless of fit.

How do I feel about Donald Trump changing the names of geographical features? I can make sense out of the Gulf of America. A portion of the U.S. surrounds the Gulf, and it's associated with the North American continent. That's not why I think Trump made the change. He could add a major geographical feature carrying our country's name and wipe out a geographical feature carrying Mexico's name with one stroke of the pen. I certainly don't think that's a valid reason to change the widely accepted name.

More recently, Trump decided to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. Although the lake borders our country, this name is more of a stretch. There are plenty of lakes within the U.S. that he could have renamed. Why Lake Ontario? In short, Canadians dared to speak out against tariffs, and the lake shares a name with a Canadian province. This might rank among the stupidest reasons I have encountered for a name change.

Something I have been actively discussing for years is our tendency to confuse issues. Although related, people are using opposition to Trump's name changes to influence their views on a distinctly different topic. Should mapping applications use a nation's officially recognized names?

Like it or not, Trump's name changes are official. This is also nothing new. I'm pretty sure mapping applications were updated when the Obama administration changed Mt. McKinley's name to Denali. Personally, I liked that name change. McKinley doesn't really have anything to do with Alaska, and Alaskans have long preferred Denali. The state of Ohio has tried hard to keep the name Mt. McKinley because McKinley was from Ohio. Unfortunately, Trump changed it back, but I think it's a safe assumption that a lot of people criticizing Google and Apple didn't feel the same way about changing Mt. McKinley to Denali.

Most mapping services have policies to follow the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). When Google followed their own policies, many of their users insisted on changing to Apple Maps. There's a problem with that solution. Apple has the same policy. It was no surprise that Apple eventually made the change themselves.

MapQuest used to be one of the top mapping websites, but they have lost substantial market share. They also have similar views on the GNIS, but they have turned their refusal to make the change into a marketing tool. Supposedly, a lot of people are now switching to MapQuest for standing up to Trump.

A lot of people are mad at Google and Apple because they made a politically motivated decision not to change their policies for political reasons. MapQuest is being praised for going against their policies for political reasons. I personally hate Trump's name changes, but I am not going to attack Google and Apple over their actions on this particular matter. They may have liberal tendencies overall, but they tried not to use their mapping applications to promote a political agenda. MapQuest, on the other hand, is clearly trying to exploit political division.