I see on Google maps that there is a mile-long island in Lake Kagawong, which is a lake on Manitoulin Island, which is in turn an island in Lake Huron. Could it be that there is a lake on that small island, which would therefore be a lake within a lake within a lake? I can see a few dark dots at maximum Google resolution which could just be lakes, but more likely ponds, in keeping with Wikipedia’s article on Manitoulin Island: “in turn a few of these ‘islands within islands’ have their own ponds.”
Are there lakes within lakes within lakes elsewhere, perhaps in the Caspian Sea? Or are any of the Manitoulin ponds named, which to my mind would be good enough to give them Lake[sup]3[/sup] status? You’d think that some enterprising soul would name one of these ponds Lake Whatever just so he could throw up a huge sign saying “see the world’s only lake within a lake within a lake”.
Believe it or not, we did this question a lomng time ago. I am not sure how to search for it. I remember getting to the third level of so if you include ponds but the definitions get tricky very fast.
The Lake Toba area in Indonesia is an interesting place.
You have the island of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. Then you have Lake Toba with Samosir Island in the middle. And finally you have several small lakes on the island itself. The largest of which is Lake Sidohoni.
I was there many years ago. Its a very cool place (literally). Even though its almost right on the equator, its elevation (3000’) and cool lake water gives it a pleasant climate.
…And I’d be right (that I was wrong). A lake is a body of water enclosed by land. A pond is the same thing, but smaller than a lake. That’s what the dictionary says.
And you also have the ambiguity of when does a widening in a river/stream become a lake/pond? That’s why I like the idea of the body of water having a name, although I realise that that criterion can be manipulated too.
I asked it. I titled it “recursive islands”, IIRC. It was a long time ago, and it has gone the way of all old threads. It didn’t get an extremely definitive answer anyway.
I think it becomes a pond when a dam or other obstruction causes it to back up - there’s probably a different name for stretches of river that just widen for other reasons.
I’ve always understood the difference between a pond and a lake as being whether or not life-sustaining light reached the deepest portion of the bottom. ‘Yes’ for a pond, ‘No’ for a lake.
