Insignificant question about lake names

mike64

mike64

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We have dozens of small inland lakes around where I live, and they are typically "_____ Lake", where the "Lake" comes after the name, like "Cass Lake" Orchard Lake", etc.

Other lakes are "Lake _____". I used to think only larger lakes got named this way, like "Lake Tahoe", "Lake Mead", or of course the great lakes. But we have friends who moved by a smaller lake called "Lake Sherwood" and looking at Google maps, I see a couple lakes here and there that are very small but start with "Lake" -- for example "Lake Neva", "Lake Ona".

So I got to wondering...is there some reason why it's "Lake _____" or "______ Lake", or is it completely arbitrary? :confused:
 
tashasdaddy

tashasdaddy

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

no, completely arbitary. we have cresent lake, and lake george, george's lake.
 
L

Limited-Time

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

Seems completely arbitrary to me.....................I guess it all stems from the original references to the lake..............:confused::confused::confused:
 
heycods

heycods

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

Maby its who originally named it, In Spanish its house white, in english its the white house.
Around here most of the new lakes are reservoirs. ie my home lake is OH Ivie Reservoir,
 
B

BoatBuoy

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

Most of the lakes around here are ______ Lake. Lake _______ , for anything smaller than a Great Lake, always sounded somewhat pretentious to me.
 
rolmops

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

There are some significant factors involved,apart from size.
Whenever the lake in question had a name before white settlers came,it usually became lake such or so.The smaller lakes were nameless and settlers often named them after the local land owner.Later when tourist industry started naming lakes, the catchy part was put first and the word lake always came second.
 
mike64

mike64

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

rolmops said:
There are some significant factors involved,apart from size.
Whenever the lake in question had a name before white settlers came,it usually became lake such or so.The smaller lakes were nameless and settlers often named them after the local land owner.Later when tourist industry started naming lakes, the catchy part was put first and the word lake always came second.
Click to expand...

This makes sense-- that maybe the reason larger lakes are "Lake ____" is not directly because of their size, it's because the larger lakes were most likely to have names going way back, and those traditionally got "Lake" added to the front of the name. For lakes named more recently, at some point it got changed to "____ Lake".

Anyway, I can't think of a larger lake that does not start with "Lake", say the size of Lake St. Clair (between Lake Huron and Lake Erie) or larger.
 
CATransplant

CATransplant

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

In Minnesota, we have so darn many lakes that some of the most popular names have several lakes bearing them. There are a bunch of Long Lakes, Mud Lakes, Silver Lakes and Rice Lakes in Minnesota. Often, when someone says they caught a mess of fish in some lake, you have to ask them what county they were in. In a couple of cases, even that doesn't help, since there are a few that have more than one lake with the same name in the same county.

Very confusing, but it's a pleasant confusion. I'm not exactly sure how many, but there are at least twenty boatable, fishable lakes within a 30 minute drive of my house, and I live right in the big city. Amazing!
 
mainexile

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

My favorite name is a lake in Maine: Mooselookmeguntic:rolleyes:
 
mike64

mike64

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Re: Insignificant question about lake names

CATransplant said:
In Minnesota, we have so darn many lakes that some of the most popular names have several lakes bearing them. There are a bunch of Long Lakes, Mud Lakes, Silver Lakes and Rice Lakes in Minnesota. Often, when someone says they caught a mess of fish in some lake, you have to ask them what county they were in. In a couple of cases, even that doesn't help, since there are a few that have more than one lake with the same name in the same county.

Very confusing, but it's a pleasant confusion. I'm not exactly sure how many, but there are at least twenty boatable, fishable lakes within a 30 minute drive of my house, and I live right in the big city. Amazing!
Click to expand...

Yeah, we've got several Long Lakes in Michigan too. Also several Big Lakes, Pleasant Lakes, Green Lakes, Silver Lakes. Seems like our forefathers weren't too imaginative when it came to naming lakes. :p
 
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