Dime Library

On August 27, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.”But Ontario has been renamed before.The word comes from the language of the Wendat people, whose homeland once stretched across the Great Lakes region before disease, war, removal, and government policy scattered their descendants from Quebec to Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma.This is the story of that word: where it came from, what happened to the people who spoke it, and why a name that has survived kings, governors, empires, and four centuries of mapmakers may have something to tell us about this week.The lake is big. The lake is beautiful. It has heard this before.