Lake Ontario

This page serves as official documentation explaining OpenStreetMap's coverage of Lake Ontario. It is not OSM's official representation of the lake, which is located at 1206310 1206310.

Lake Ontario, Great Lakes, North America link=https://wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ItemByTitle/enwiki/Lake Ontario

latitude: 43.5, longitude: -77.9

Browse map of Lake Ontario 43°30′00.00″ N, 77°54′00.00″ W

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Lake Ontario is a lake in Great Lakes, North America at latitude 43°30′00.00″ North, longitude 77°54′00.00″ West.

Bordering countries

• Canada (Ontario)
• United States (New York)

Name

The name of the lake became politically contentious in August 2026, especially on maps. As OSM is not a consumer-facing product per se, the OpenStreetMap Foundation's longstanding policy regarding geopolitical disputes is to prioritize the on the ground rule by default but also record information about notable alternative claims, so that data consumers such as renderers and geocoders can choose what to present to end users.

As of September 2026, the Lake Ontario relation has tags indicating its many names, most notably:

Key	Meaning	Value	Justification	Introduced
name	Common name in the local language	Lake Ontario	English is the most commonly spoken language in both the US and Canada.	2011
name:en	Common name in English globally	Lake Ontario	This name remains overwhelmingly popular both in the U.S. and abroad and so far continues to be used by most news and print media.	2026-01
name:fr	Common name in French globally	Lac Ontario	Traditional name (in the other official language of Canada).	2013
official_name:en-US	English name preferred by U.S. federal government agencies	Lake America	Official U.S. federal government position per GNIS and GNS, as ordered in Executive Order 14422. The order is only binding on the U.S. federal government, but the name is very unpopular according to opinion polling, particularly in local areas bordering the lake, and so far rarely used in news or print media.	2026-08

In practice, renderers are unlikely to label the lake based on official_name:en-US=*. OpenStreetMap Carto and Tracestrack Topo use name=*, while OpenStreetMap Americana defaults to name:en=* for English speakers, name:fr=* for French speakers, etc., based on browser preferences or a user configuration option. On the other hand, most geocoders are likely to find the lake if the user searches by any of these names, including the value of official_name:en-US=*, but the result will be labeled based on name:en=*, name:fr=*, etc., depending on the user's language settings.

This tagging is the product of considerable community discussion and following the extensive discussion and community consensus on the Gulf of Mexico naming dispute. Do not change these tags without consulting OSM's global and U.S. communities; undiscussed changes will be reverted on sight by the community or the Data Working Group.

Further reading

• Fleming, Chris (13 September 2026). “What’s in a name? Naming things in OpenStreetMap”. OpenStreetMap Blog. Cambridge: OpenStreetMap Foundation. https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2026/09/13/whats-in-a-name-naming-things-in-openstreetmap/. Retrieved 14 September 2026.