508 A NOTE ON THE ETYMON OF ONTARIO. 



recognize the Iroquois Nundawa-oiio, — ono and eronon in the northera 

 and southern dialects respectively implying *' people." 



The Wyandots or Hurons, inhabiting the regions where we now 

 find our home —in their hostile expeditions against their hereditary 

 foes and ultimate conquerers, the Five Nations, — had to cross our 

 lake ; and the first of these nations upon whom they would descend 

 was this tribe of Entouhonorons, as they would style them. Hence 

 they spoke of the lake which was the highway to the country of their 

 enemies, and which probably at the time bore no general geographical 

 appellation in our sense of the term, as the Lake of the Entou- 

 honorons, 



Disguised, then, through the difiiculty which the early and generally 

 unphilological European settlers experienced in catching and rendering 

 the exact sounds and syllables of a nasally-pronounced unwritten lan- 

 guage, divided into dialects, some admitting, some rejecting, labials 

 and liquids, — do we not see in du Creux's Lacus Ouentaronius an 

 efPort to express in Latin phrase the " Lake of the Ondierons," 

 as he seems to have caught the sound, (compare his Oadieronii) who 

 were plainly the same as the Nundawa-ono, the Sonnontonans, Ison- 

 ontonans, Antouhonorons, or Entouhonorons 1 Just as in his Lacus 

 Erius he expressed "Lac des Erig6s" or " Eries." And then in this 

 Ouentaronius, pronounced according to the French phonetic system, 

 do we not detect Ontario ? Have we not here a transition-term to 

 that familiar household word ? 



Then, if so, our lake becomes at once historic in its appellation ; 

 it retains within its syllables an interesting memento of by-gone times . 

 and it falls into the category of the other great lakes in respect to 

 nomenclature. As the Upper Lake derived a name from the Ojibwas 

 on its borders, and the next in descending order was designated from 

 the Wyandots or Hurons, the next from the Illinois, and the next 

 from the Eriges or Eries, so the next was the lake of the distinguished 

 tribe of the Entouhonorons or Senecas. 



And if any etymological element seeming to signify "beautiful," 

 has been discovered in " Ontario," by those who have had some ac- 

 quaintance with the local aboriginal dialects, the coincidence has been 

 most probably accidental — one of those chance literal or syllabic re- 

 semblances which are so frequently to be met with in the comparison 

 of languages, and on which it is generally unsafe to build. 



