What Is in a “Lake” Name? That Which We Call a Lake by Any Other Name

Abstract

Given how important lakes are to people, it might seem safe to assume that careful thought has been put into the naming of lakes, and that lake names reflect the high societal value people place on lakes. We examined these assumptions by analyzing the official names in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System for the 479,950 lakes ≥ 1 ha in the conterminous U.S. We found that 83% of lakes were unnamed and most of these were small lakes with 80% of unnamed lakes being smaller than 4 ha. Based on the 83,115 named lakes, we found that lake names reflect peoples' everyday lives, that lakes can inspire creativity (although the most common lake name is “Mud”), that Native American and indigenous languages have played a role in lake naming, and that there are regional differences in lake names. Unfortunately, we also found that derogatory terms were part of some lake names. We advocate for thoughtful and inclusive official naming of the 400,000 unnamed lakes in the U.S., as well as renaming of the lakes with derogatory terms to help focus attention on the importance of lakes to local communities and nations.

LAGOS‐US LOCUS v1.0: Data module of location, identifiers, and physical characteristics of lakes and their watersheds in the conterminous U.S.

“…We are making these data available as soon as they have been completed; therefore, just two articles have been published using a small part of this data module to date-lake names in the conterminous U.S. (Soranno et al 2020) and lake point and polygon GIS vector files (McCullough et al 2019). Because this data module includes all lakes and their watersheds in the conterminous U.S., characteristics of both lakes and watersheds, and GIS files, it is likely that this data module will be used as a base dataset for many future macroscale or continental-scale analyses of lakes.…”

“…4), and flags associated with these observations. Refer to Soranno et al (2020) for a more detailed description of U.S. lake names, including regional patterns and commonly used, derogatory, or unusual names.…”

Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin Volume 33 Number 1 February 2024 1‐43

“…Of the 480,000 lakes >1 hectare in the conterminous United States, 83,000 lakes have a registered name (Soranno et al 2020). In linguistics, geographic place names (toponyms) that refer to lakes are called limnonyms.…”

“…The part of the name that specifically says it is a water body, and which type, is the appellation (Hellquist 1903). The appellation of almost every lacustrine water body in the United States is either "lake," "pond," or "reservoir," and the 4 th most abundant appellation, "tank," applies to a mere 486 (0.6%) of the water bodies with a registered name (Soranno et al 2020). According to their data base, only very few or no lakes have other appellations that occur in the British Isles, where many of the colonizers of American land originate, such as "loch," "lough," "mere," "tarn," "lllyn," "broad," "pool," and "water" (Table 1).…”

“…To find out, I considered 57,947 Swedish lake names (Fig. 1), and compared with the ambitious analysis of Soranno et al (2020) of 83,115 lakes names of the conterminous United States.…”