Is there any rhyme or reason to how we name a lake in english?
It seems more common to use the term “lake” first, as in Lake Michigan, Lake Tahoe, Lake Baikal, etc.
Yet there are plenty of significantly sized bodies of water that do the reverse: Great Bear Lake, Great Salt Lake, Rainy Lake, etc.
QtM, passing the time until the football games start.
It appears that the rule is this:
Lake [Proper Name]
[Adjective] Lake
In the particular examples that you give, “Lake X” is used where the name has no meaning in English, while “X Lake” is used where the name consists of English words. I imagine a hypothetical lake called “Round” would be “Round Lake” rather than “Lake Round”. It will be interesting to see if that rule applies in general.
None of the Finger Lakes follow the “rule”:
Otisco Lake
Skaneateles Lake
Owasco Lake
Cayuga Lake
Seneca Lake
Keuka Lake
Canandaigua Lake
Honeoye Lake
Canadice Lake
Hemlock Lake
Conesus Lake
Custom and tradition.
We discussed this a couple of years ago on the American Names Society’s listserv, and the general consensus was that Lake comes first primarily when the feature was named by the French or when the body of water is of particularly significant size. If the name is descriptive of the lake (Round, Green, Shady, Rice) in English that does nearly always seem to go first. Sometimes custom changes over the years: Chicago’s Lake Calumet was known as Calumet Lake on early 20th century maps.
Same sort of thing for mountains: Mt. McKinley, Bald Mountain. I had a thread similar to this quite some time ago about the difference between “range” and “mountains”: Alaska Range, Rocky Mountains. Never did get a definitive reply.
Okay, consider my curiosity relatively satisfied.
Thanks, gang.
Lake Superior does seem to be a bit of an exception, although the name was originally French Lac supérieur.
Note too that in French, adjectives follow the noun they modify in general, unlike English.
There’s an interesting situation here in Oregon related to this.
One of the suburbs of Portland is Lake Oswego. You’d think the lake it’s on is also called Lake Oswego. But no, it’s Oswego Lake.