GoKawiilHere we go again…
A few hours ago, US President Trump signed an Executive Order ordering GNIS to be updated to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America”, and it seems the update has already taken effect (although to note, the GNIS entry cites “Executive Order 14420”, but that is in fact the executive order on “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans”; this new executive order has not been officially published in the Federal Register yet and thus does not yet have a number).
Precedent from the Gulf of Mexico/“Gulf of America” discussion as well as accepted OSM convention would suggest that once GNIS is updated (which it appears it is already), official_name:en-US=* should be added/changed to Lake America , but name=* left as is unless and until common usage on the ground on both sides of the border shifts to prefer the “Lake America” name (which seems very unlikely).
So far, the Lake Ontario relation (1206310) as well as at least one other nearby feature has already had its name=* changed once, though it was swiftly reverted and changed to official_name:en-US=* instead, which is the current status quo as of this writing. I expect to see that happen a lot more in the near future, in line with what happened to the Gulf of Mexico, so good to get on top of this now.
Therefore, following a discussion with other local mappers on the OSM-US Slack and a request from @iandees , I created this thread for discussion with the relevant communities to confirm this consensus still applies in this case, and a thread that can be cited and mappers can be directed to documenting the resulting consensus. I’ve also pinged and briefed the DWG on the issue so they are aware. Once decided, it seems worth updating the Lake Ontario OSM wiki page (which was previously proposed for deletion) to document this consensus, as done on the Gulf of Mexico’s page.