Place Names of Ontario

Place Names Can Provide Valuable Insight Into a variety of fascinating aspects of geography, history, languages, cultures, and customs of a particular region. Ontario, with its extensive overlay of place names with connections to the British Isles, differs markedly in place-name characteristics from Canada's other regions, especially those which have been historically imprinted with the French language and culture.In this, the first wide-ranging review of Ontario's physical and cultural place names, Alan Rayburn has selected 2,285 from the province's 57,000 official toponyms including all 815 municipalities, as well as unincorporated places with populations exceeding 75, and a large selection of the more prominent lakes, rivers, islands, points, hills, mountains, and highways.Rayburn sets the record straight on the origin of many names including that of Toronto, which does not mean 'place of meeting, ' but reflects the transfer of the Mohawk description of fish weirs in The Narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching.He points out that Kitchener would still be Berlin but for the First World War, and Fort William and PortRayburn, Alan is the author of 'Place Names of Ontario' with ISBN 9780802006028 and ISBN 0802006027.