A lake by many names: How Lake Ontario got – and kept – its name
By Dan Higgins, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
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NEW YORK (The Buffalo News) — Lake Ontario has carried several names over nearly four centuries. French kings and colonial governors had names attached to it, while Jesuit missionaries preserved versions of its Indigenous-derived name. Eventually, Ontario outlasted the alternatives.
BEFORE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT: The name Ontario comes from an Indigenous language, although sources differ on its precise derivation. Canadian place-name scholar Alan Rayburn traced it to the Mohawk kanyatariiya, meaning “handsome lake.” Natural Resources Canada gives the Iroquois kanadario, meaning “sparkling” water.
1632: French explorer Samuel de Champlain labels the lake Lac St. Louis, honoring the French king.
1635: Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf refers to it as the Lake of the Iroquois.
1639: Dutch geographer Johannes de Laet uses Ontario.
1641: Jesuit Jérôme Lalemant uses Ontario but also gives St. Louis as an alternative.
1647-48: Jesuit missionary Paul Ragueneau describes it as “a lake named Ontario which we call Saint Louys.”
1654: Jesuit missionary Simon Le Moyne refers simply to “a great lake called Ontario.”
1688: Italian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli captures the unsettled naming on a single map, labeling the lake “Lac Frontenac ou Ontario et Skaniadorio ou St. Louis.” Frontenac honored Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac and governor general of New France.
1688: Jesuit cartographer Pierre Raffeix produces a manuscript map titled “Le lac Ontario avec les lieux circonvoisins et particulièrement les cinq nations iroquoises” – “Lake Ontario with the surrounding places and particularly the Five Iroquois Nations.”
LATE 1600s: The Indigenous-derived Ontario increasingly displaces the competing European names. Great Lakes scholar Ivan H. Walton later wrote that it “superseded all others.”
1867: The newly created Canadian province of Ontario takes its name from the lake, rather than the other way around.
AUG. 27, 2026: President Trump signs an executive order directing the U.S. federal government to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The order requires the Interior Department to begin changing federal maps, databases, documents and communications within 30 days. The order only applies to the U.S. federal government.
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