Lake America on Your Google Map? How to Set Up the Region

On 29 August 2026 Google announced that Google Maps now labels Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes by surface area, "Lake America" for people in the United States, after the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) changed the name it lists. Google's own note says people in Canada keep seeing "Lake Ontario" and people elsewhere see both names.

Within a day, Canadian websites were showing "Lake America" to Canadians: the LCBO store locator, GO Transit's station finder and Hydro One's outage map, as reported by CBC News. Two of our own Canadian customers reported the same thing.

This guide explains why an embedded map behaves differently from the Google Maps app, what that meant for StoreRocket locators, and how to set the region so your map shows the names your customers expect.

Related: Google Maps vs Mapbox | How to get a Google Maps API key

#Why a Canadian website shows the US name

The Google Maps app and google.com/maps follow the person using them. An embedded map does not decide by the visitor's location. It follows the region the website passes when it loads the Maps JavaScript API.

Google documents this as the region parameter on the script tag and encourages developers to always set one:

 1https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_KEY&region=CA

What is easy to miss is the behaviour when the parameter is left out. Loading the same map on 1 September 2026 from a European connection at zoom level 7, with different region values, gave these labels:

In this check, a map with no region behaved exactly like a map set to US. That is why a Canadian site, built by a Canadian team, for Canadian visitors, showed the US name: nobody had told the map which country it was for.

#What that meant for StoreRocket locators

Before 1 September, every StoreRocket locator running on Google Maps loaded the map without a region. On every visitor's screen, in every country, those maps behaved as if they were in the United States. Many of the businesses using them are American and never noticed. The Canadian, Australian, British and German businesses among them were serving their local customers a map localised for the United States.

The Mapbox locators were not affected. In the same check on 1 September 2026, Mapbox's map tiles showed no name on that lake and its address search returned neither name.

#What changed in StoreRocket on 1 September 2026

Two things, both live for every account on Google Maps:

1. Automatic region from your search settings. If your locator restricts address suggestions to exactly one country (Widget > Settings > Search restrictions, select one country, save), the map now loads with that country as its region. A locator restricted to Canada shows Canadian names. Nothing to do.
2. A region attribute for everyone else. If your locator serves several countries, or you have not set a restriction, add the region to the opening line of your existing embed code and leave the rest unchanged:

 1<div id="storerocket-widget" style="width:100%;" data-storerocket-id="YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID" data-storerocket-region="CA">

For the programmatic widget, pass it in the options:

 1StoreRocket.init({
 2    selector: '.storerocket-store-locator',
 3    account: 'YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID',
 4    region: 'CA',
 5});

The value is a two-letter country code (CA, GB, AU, DE). It changes how Google labels the map and biases address search towards that country. It does not filter your locations, and a value on the embed takes priority over the automatic one from your search restriction.

If you run one embed per market, for example a .ca page and a .com page, give each embed its own region. One page, one map, one region.

#How to check your own map

1. Open the page that carries your locator.
2. Zoom the map to the lake, or to any border region with disputed or translated names.
3. If the label is not the one your customers use, you are loading the map without a region. Set it as above, reload, and check again.

There is no cache to clear on our side. The region is read every time the map loads. One thing to check if the label still does not change: if another script on the page loads Google Maps before the locator does, that first script decides the localisation, and its loader needs the same region.

#If you embed Google Maps without StoreRocket

The fix is the same one-line change on any website. Find the script tag that loads the Maps JavaScript API and add the region:

 1<script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_KEY&region=CA&language=en"></script>

Google's documentation for both parameters is at Localizing the Map. The language parameter controls the language of labels and controls; region controls which country's names and borders you see.

#Sources

• Google, How the GNIS Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps, 29 August 2026
• CBC News, Google updates maps to show Lake America in the U.S. but Canadians are now seeing it, too, 30 August 2026
• Global News, Why some Canadian website maps show 'Lake America' instead of Lake Ontario, 31 August 2026
• Google Maps Platform, Localizing the Map