Ontari-ari-ario...

[fajrdrako]

When I was in England, my friend Simon and I were talking about the name of the province of Ontario, and wondering what the name meant and where it came from. I finally got around to looking it up:

The name for the province of Ontario is from an Iroquois word meaning beautiful lake or beautiful water and was first used for Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes.

Which begs the issue of how Ontario, California got its name: no Iroquois there, as far as I know.