By Scott Berthelette
On August 27, 2026, President of america Donald Trump signed an government order directing the U.S. federal authorities to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The order requires the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and federal businesses to make use of the brand new identify on federal maps, databases, paperwork, and communications.
Instantly after Trump’s government order, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a press release explaining the place the identify Ontario comes from:
“The identify Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat phrase Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is gorgeous, the lake is large.’”
The identify, Carney emphasised, is greater than 4 centuries previous, predating each Canadian Confederation and the American Declaration of Independence. His conclusion was pointed: Canadians perceive that “naming actuality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and all the time.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s response was significantly extra combative and theatrical. On August 29, carrying a Staff Canada soccer jersey, Ford unveiled an infinite 24-by-12-foot signal on the Lake Ontario shoreline close to Hamilton:
“Lake Ontario. Now and At all times.
Lac Ontario. Aujourd’hui et pour toujours.”
The $25,000 signal, elevated roughly six ft above the bottom, makes your complete construction practically eighteen ft excessive. “President Trump can name it no matter, however I can let you know the remainder of the world will all the time name it Lake Ontario,” Ford mentioned.
The present controversy isn’t the primary time {that a} authorities official has tried to present Lake Ontario a special identify. Actually, the lake has carried a number of names over its lengthy historical past. Through the early and mid-seventeenth century, French writers and mapmakers variously referred to it as lac des Iroquois, lac Saint-Louis, lac Ontario,and Skanadario (“stunning lake”). Of those competing names, Ontario finally endured, changing into the identify not solely of the lake however, within the late nineteenth century, of the province.[1] There was no single, universally accepted identify for the lake throughout a lot of the seventeenth century.
For a number of many years within the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, European maps additionally recognized Lake Ontario as Lac Frontenac (“Lake Frontenac”), after Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, governor common of New France. Frontenac served two phrases as governor, first from 1672 to 1682 and once more from 1689 till his loss of life in 1698. Like Donald Trump, Frontenac was extraordinarily self-confident, extravagant and useless, extremely quarrelsome, delicate to challenges to his authority, and deeply involved together with his personal standing and repute. No different governor of New France – not even the longer-serving Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil (twenty-two years), or Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois (twenty-one years) – loved the excellence of getting one of many Nice Lakes named after him. Whereas I’ve discovered no archival doc explicitly stating that Frontenac wished Lake Ontario to bear his identify, Lac Frontenac turned a broadly accepted designation for the lake throughout his governorship and circulated amongst his protégés, associates, and admirers, suggesting that the previous governor was hardly troubled by the honour.
Frontenac turned governor of New France in 1672. He was a extra expansionist governor than his rapid predecessors and was decided to advertise (and take part in) the fur commerce. In 1673 he ordered the development of a buying and selling submit at Cataraqui, on the japanese finish of Lake Ontario, on the positioning of present-day Kingston, Ontario. Residents of Montreal have been ordered to help in its building. The submit, initially referred to as Fort Cataraqui and shortly as Fort Frontenac, proved costly to keep up, and in 1675 it was conceded as a seigneury to René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, one in every of Frontenac’s shut allies, who agreed to rebuild and garrison it at his personal expense. Montreal’s retailers and fur merchants have been incensed. They feared, with some justification, that Fort Frontenac would permit the governor and his associates to monopolize the fur commerce by diverting the furs exchanged within the Lake Ontario area away from Montreal. Frontenac himself had monetary pursuits within the commerce, and his governorship turned entangled in bitter disputes over commerce, patronage, and political authority.
A lot of those that promoted the identify Lac Frontenac moved throughout the political and patronage networks surrounding the governor. They have been, for essentially the most half, purchasers or associates of Frontenac and sure substituted “Frontenac” for “Ontario” of their récits de voyage (journey narratives), letters, stories, and maps as a type of flattery, one that may assist to safe patronage, promotions, or different favours from the governor. Such gestures have been a part of the patronage networks that permeated the political tradition of New France and, extra broadly, Ancien Régime France. Development depended closely upon cultivating highly effective protectors who may suggest purchasers for places of work, acquire royal permissions, and business privileges, or advance their pursuits at court docket. Naming a fort, lake, river, or newly “found” territory after a patron was a political gesture and a public expression of loyalty and gratitude that bolstered the connection between patron and shopper.[2]
These political gestures of patronage even prolonged past the japanese Nice Lakes. In 1673, fur dealer Louis Jolliet departed on an expedition commissioned by the federal government of New France to analyze stories of an ideal river flowing south: the Mississippi. Accompanied by the Jesuit Jacques Marquette, Jolliet descended the Mississippi so far as the Arkansas River, far sufficient to find out that the river emptied not into the Pacific however into the Gulf of Mexico, one other physique of water which the Trump administration has tried to rename. Glad with their discoveries, Jolliet and Marquette started their homeward journey. Whereas Marquette remained on the mission of Saint-François-Xavier in present-day Wisconsin, Jolliet hastened again to Quebec to report back to Governor Frontenac.
The map (Determine 6) that Jolliet subsequently offered to Frontenac remodeled the geography of the continental inside into a rare tribute to the governor and his household. Lake Ontario appeared as Lac Frontenac ou Ontario, whereas the Mississippi turned the Rivière de Buade, taking over Frontenac’s household identify. Within the letter accompanying the map, Jolliet explicitly drew the governor’s consideration to the honour, describing what we now know because the Mississippi as the good river “which bears your identify.”[3] Lastly, Jolliet labelled an enormous territory within the inside Frontenacie, basically, “Frontenac-land.” The names have been hardly unintended. Jolliet was presenting the outcomes of his expedition to Frontenac, and naming a lot of the continent after the governor was an apparent type of flattery.
René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle took cost of the newly constructed fort at Cataraqui in 1673 and secured the official seigneurial grant for the fort in 1675. Initially referred to as Fort Cataraqui, the institution quickly turned referred to as Fort Frontenac in honour of La Salle’s highly effective patron. By Could 1675, when King Louis XIV of France formally granted the submit to La Salle, the royal concession already referred to it as “the fort known as Frontenac,” whereas persevering with to name the physique of water on which it stood “Lake Ontario.”[4] With Frontenac’s help, La Salle subsequently acquired permission to determine buying and selling posts farther into the continental inside, extending French business and territorial claims at comparatively little price to the Crown. In 1682, La Salle descended the Mississippi to its mouth and claimed your complete Mississippi basin for Louis XIV underneath the identify of “Louisiana.”
Like Jolliet, La Salle likewise adopted the governor’s identify for Lake Ontario. The official narrative of La Salle’s voyages from 1679 to 1681, for instance, describes the Niagara River as emptying into “Lake Frontenac” (la rivière de Niagara se jette dans le lac Frontenac).[5] The selection was revealing. La Salle was a detailed protégé of Frontenac whose western ambitions depended closely upon the governor’s help, and the identify Lac Frontenac circulated by way of accounts and maps related together with his expeditions. For instance, Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin’s 1684 Carte de la Louisiane ou des voyages du Sr de La Salle (Determine 8) identifies Lake Ontario as Lac Frontenac. In 1682, the engineer and cartographer Jean-Baptiste Minet, who later joined La Salle’s expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, produced an in depth plan in his journal of the japanese finish of Lake Ontario entitled Lac de Frontenac et Supply du Saint-Laurent (Determine 9).
Récollet missionary Louis Hennepin, who participated in La Salle’s western expeditions and spent appreciable time at Fort Frontenac, likewise referred to Lake Ontario as Lac de Frontenac in his Description de la Louisiane printed in Paris in 1683. Hennepin’s printed firsthand account included an vital fold-out engraved map titled Carte de la Nouvelle France et de la Louisiane nouvellement découverte (Determine 10) which additionally depicted Lac Frontenac.
Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de Lahontan, a French soldier and chronicler of New France’s historical past, loved a detailed relationship with Governor Frontenac. Lahontan served underneath Frontenac through the defence of Quebec in opposition to an expeditionary drive of New England colonists in 1690 and usually portrayed the governor favourably in his writings, regardless of declining Frontenac’s proposal that he marry his eighteen-year-old goddaughter. Lahontan additionally adopted the governor’s identify for Lake Ontario in his Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale. His Carte Générale de Canada, printed in 1703, identifies the lake prominently as Lac Ontario ou de Frontenac (Determine 11).
Writing from the vantage level of the eighteenth century, the Jesuit historian Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix mirrored on this earlier strategy of naming and renaming Lake Ontario: “This lake bore for a while the identify of Saint Louis; it was subsequently given the identify Frontenac, as was the fort of Cataracoui, of which the Comte of Frontenac was the founder. However step by step the lake resumed its former identify, which is Huron or Iroquois, and the fort took the identify of the place the place it was constructed.”[6] As Father Charlevoix famous, the Indigenous identify for the lake finally reasserted itself in widespread utilization. In the long term, Lake Ontario had profound endurance.
Lac Frontenac loved appreciable foreign money amongst French explorers, writers, and mapmakers through the late seventeenth century, however it by no means fully changed Ontario. Through the eighteenth century, Ontario more and more prevailed over Frontenac. The governor’s identify lingered on some maps for many years, generally alongside Ontario, however it by no means succeeded in displacing the older Indigenous-derived identify. One thing related occurred with the fort. Though Fort Frontenac remained an official and recognizable designation, French writers additionally continued to name the submit Cataracoui or Cataraqui, preserving the Indigenous-derived identify of the place the place it had been constructed. [7]
By the eighteenth century, main French cartographers corresponding to Guillaume Delisle, Philippe Buache, Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, and Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville had usually returned to Lac Ontario.
The governor’s identify disappeared from the map, whereas Ontario endured. The time period “Lake America” will doubtless meet the identical destiny. Then as now, the identify of a spot isn’t merely what political authorities decree or placed on official maps, however what individuals truly name it. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it, “Canadians additionally know that naming actuality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and all the time.”
Dr. Scott Berthelette is an Affiliate Professor within the Division of Historical past at Queen’s College whose analysis focuses on New France, Euro-Indigenous Relations, and the early fashionable Atlantic World. His first e book, Heirs of an Ambivalent Empire: French-Indigenous Relations and the Rise of the Métis within the Hudson Bay Watershed, was printed with McGill-Queen’s College Press in 2022. It was awarded the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher E book Prize from the French Colonial Historic Society for the very best e book in French colonial historical past. Scott has additionally printed his analysis findings within the Canadian Historic Assessment, Ethnohistory, American Indian Quarterly, and Early American Research.
Bibliography
Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier de. Journal d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique septentrionale. Edited by Pierre Berthiaume. 2 vols. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1994.
Eccles, W. J. Frontenac: The Courtier Governor. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1959.
Eccles, W. J. “Buade, Louis de, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1. College of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. Accessed September 4, 2026. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/buade_de_frontenac_et_de_palluau_louis_de_1E.html
Havard, Gilles. Empire et métissages: Indiens et Français dans le Pays d’en Haut, 1660–1715. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 2003.
Hayes, Derek. Historic Atlas of Canada: Canada’s Historical past Illustrated with Unique Maps. Rev. ed. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 2015.
Hennepin, Louis. Description de la Louisiane, nouvellement découverte au sud-ouest de la Nouvelle France. Paris: Chez la veuve Sébastien Huré, 1683.
La Salle, René-Robert Cavelier de. Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de La Salle from 1679 to 1681: The Official Narrative. Translated by Melville B. Anderson. Chicago: Caxton Membership, 1901.
Litalien, Raymonde, Jean-François Palomino, and Denis Vaugeois. La mesure d’un continent: Atlas historique de l’Amérique du Nord, 1492–1814. Québec: Éditions du Septentrion; Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007.
Macfarlane, Daniel. The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental Historical past. Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s College Press, 2024.
Murray, Laura. “Ka’tarohkwi: The Unique Swamp Ward?” Swamp Ward and Interior Harbour Historical past Undertaking. Accessed September 8, 2026. https://swampwardhistory.com/katarokwi-the-original-swamp-ward/
Palomino, Jean-François. “Relire les cartes géographiques du Mississippi de l’époque de Louis Jolliet.” Les Cahiers des Dix, no. 77 (2023–2024): 1–29.
Palomino, Jean-François. Cartographier la Nouvelle-France: Le savoir géographique au service de l’État (1534–1744). Montréal: Boréal, 2026.
Preston, Richard A., ed. Royal Fort Frontenac. Translated by Leopold Lamontagne. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1958.
Rayburn, Alan. Place Names of Canada. Toronto: Oxford College Press, 2010.
Roy, Pierre-Georges. Inventaire des insinuations du Conseil souverain de la Nouvelle-France. Beauceville, QC: L’Éclaireur, 1921.
Walczynski, Mark. Jolliet and Marquette: A New Historical past of the 1673 Expedition. Champaign: College of Illinois Press, 2023.
[1] The phrase “Ontario” could also be derived from Kaniatarí:io or Oniatarí:io, Iroquoian-language phrases that may be translated as “lake of shining waters” or “stunning lake.” Daniel Macfarlane, The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental Historical past (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s College Press, 2024), 4.
[2] Jean-François Palomino, Cartographier la Nouvelle-France: Le savoir géographique au service de l’État (1534–1744) (Montréal: Boréal, 2026), 97-107.
[3] Louis Jolliet, Nouvelle découverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l’année 1673 et 1674, 1674. John Carter Brown Library, Map Assortment.
[4] “Concession par Sa Majesté à Robert Cavelier de la Salle du fort Frontenac, 13 mai 1675,” in Pierre-Georges Roy, Inventaire des insinuations du Conseil souverain de la Nouvelle-France (Beauceville, QC: L’Éclaireur, 1921), 33.
[5] Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de La Salle from 1679 to 1681: The Official Narrative, trans. Melville B. Anderson (Chicago: Caxton Membership, 1901), 20-21.
[6] Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Journal d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique septentrionale, ed. Pierre Berthiaume (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1994), 445.
[7] For a dialogue of Cataraqui place identify, see Laura Murray, “Ka’tarohkwi: The Unique Swamp Ward?” accessed September 8, 2026, https://swampwardhistory.com/katarokwi-the-original-swamp-ward/.
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