It seems that either the naming of, or at least the use of the name of lakes does not follow any rule of which comes first, the name of the lake, or the designation, lake. Here in western NY there are several prime examples. The Great Lakes are all called by the designation "lake" followed by the name. (Lake Ontario) On the other hand the Finger Lakes are just the opposite. (Seneca Lake) This is not a function of the size of the lake, we also have Lake Placid and Lake Champlain, neither of which is of any great size.
CBG said:
… Mountains all seem to use designation first, then the name.(Mt. Everest) Is this just a quirk of English?
Except for Pikes Peak, Clingmans Dome, or Stone Mountain.
Emmett
I've always wondered about that too. Just east of where I live is a mountain named Gavilan Peak. Up north in Flagstaff we have the highest point in Arizona ... known as either Mt. Humphreys or Humphreys Peak (depending on which map you're using). Same with lakes. Lake Pleasant is just west of here, and Bartlett Lake is to the east. And they're comparable in size. I've always thought it was just a matter of history, and what the "discoverer" decided to call it.
Strange though, that there is no River Arizona, or River Whatever. Likewise with Oceans and Seas. My guess is that it has to do with established nautical conventions, and the fact that seafarers were the first real explorers. Lakes and mountains were the domain of land explorers.
My two cents, anyway.
This just in ... I guess there was a biblical reference to the Sea of Galilee, so perhaps there are exceptions. Wiki says these days it's officially known as Lake Tiberias.
I"m sure I"ve heard "River Jordan", "River Nile", "River Thames" and "River Platt" at least as often as the other way round, and then there"s the "Rio Grande" (we have one like that near us too, Heimhenge: the "Salt River" is also the "Rio Salado").
What would be interesting is to see if there"s any clear bias for oxymoronic names, like "Canyon Hill" (33 02"33"N, 108 27"44"W); is it a hill discovered by an early explorer named Canyon, or a canyon named in honor of some historical Mr Hill? (And there"s a "Hill Canyon" — 33 01"38"N, 108 08"05"W — about twenty miles east of it, just to keep things interesting.)
Edit: note to anyone trying to cut and paste those coordinates into a mapping utility. Try as I might, the "minutes" mark keeps getting changed to "seconds" when I save the post.
Yeah, I've been noticing that single/double quotation mark glitch too. Seems to have started when Grant revised the forum a month or so ago. I've been thinking about emailing him, but figured he must be aware of the problem. Given the purpose of this forum, you'd think having the punctuation work properly would be a high priority. GRANT? PLEASE FIX!
Back on topic ... Ron, you are correct about River Jordan etc. Googling "River Nile" got 2 million hits, whereas "Nile River" got 4.6 million. So I guess there's inconsistencies with rivers as well.
I don't speak Spanish well enough to know for sure, but is it a characteristic of the language to put the "Rio" first? I visually scanned a map of Mexico and didn't find any rivers named "Something Rio." The "Rio" seems to always come first.
Curiously, in the naming of lunar features, there is a reversal of the terrestrial convention. For example, Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) and Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). Maybe, as with Spanish, that's just the way names are constructed in Latin? I'm guessing there too, as I speak even less Latin than I do Spanish.