They Can Call Her Lake America. We'll Call Her Oniatari:io.
Published by Maple Custom Song Studio · maplecustomsongstudio.ca
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America," effective immediately. The order applies to U.S. federal use only — Canada, international organizations, and the public are under no obligation to follow suit. We never will.
We live on this lake. We always have.
And when we heard what happened, we didn't get angry. We got a guitar.
What Her Real Name Means
Before any border existed. Before any treaty was signed or any map was drawn. Before European settlers had ever seen her shores — the lake already had a name.
Oniatari:io.
It comes from the Haudenosaunee language family — the Iroquoian peoples who have lived on her shores for thousands of years. It means "lake of shining waters." Other translations give us "beautiful lake" or "sparkling water." The Ojibwe people, the Anishinaabe, called her Niigani-gichigami — the forward-running lake, the one who leads.
The earliest written record of the name Ontario dates to 1641, when French explorers transcribed what the Indigenous people of the region had always called her. She had been Oniatari:io long before that moment — and she will be long after the executive order is forgotten.
You can change a label on a federal document. You cannot change what a lake is.
We Wrote a Song About It
At Maple Custom Song Studio, we write custom songs for love stories, anniversaries, birthdays, and the moments that deserve more than a card. But sometimes a moment arrives that demands a song whether you planned it or not.
This was one of those moments.
We wrote "Oniatari:io — The Lake of Shining Waters" in the tradition of the great Canadian lake ballads. Acoustic guitar. Six-eight time. A slow, rolling folk ballad that treats the lake with the reverence she deserves. The song tells her story — from the glaciers that formed her to the Haudenosaunee and Ojibwe peoples who named her, to the French explorers who wrote that name down, to the two nations who have shared her shores ever since.
The chorus is simple:
Does she know, does she know / what they're calling her now / does the lake of shining waters / even care somehow / she was Oniatari:io before this land had a name / and she'll be Oniatari:io / long after we're gone the same.
Why This Matters
The renaming of Lake Ontario isn't just a trade war provocation. It's a footnote in a long history of people in power deciding what things should be called — and whose names deserve to survive.
The Haudenosaunee didn't name this lake in English. They named her in the language they had spoken on her shores for generations. When settlers arrived, they kept the name — not out of respect, but because it was already so deeply embedded in the land, the maps, and the people that it couldn't be removed. It still can't.
Oniatari:io is not a Canadian name or an American name. It belongs to the people who gave it, and to the lake herself. No executive order reaches that far.
We live on Lake Ontario in Hamilton, Ontario. We wake up to her. We watch her through every season. We have built our lives beside her shores. And when someone decided overnight that she needed a new name — a name that erases ten thousand years of history in three words — we did what we know how to do.
We told her story in a song.
Songs Are How We Remember
This is what Maple Custom Song Studio believes, and it's why we do what we do every single day.
Songs outlast documents. Songs outlast executive orders. Songs outlast administrations and trade wars and political moments that feel enormous in the week they happen and are forgotten inside a generation.
Gordon Lightfoot wrote "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in 1976 and it is still the definitive account of what happened on Lake Superior that November. Not the newspaper reports. Not the official inquiry. The song.
We wrote "Oniatari:io" in that tradition — not because we think we're Gordon Lightfoot, but because the lake deserved a song today. Her name deserved to be said out loud, in full, with the weight it carries.
She is Oniatari:io.
She was here before us. She'll be here after.
We Are a Custom Song Studio Based in Hamilton, Ontario
We live on the shores of Lake Ontario. We write original custom songs for anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, first dances, family reunions, and every meaningful moment in between.
Every song we write is completely original — built from your real story, your real words, your real people. No templates. No stock lyrics. Just your moment, turned into music that lasts.
If you have a story worth telling, we'd like to help you tell it.
👉 maplecustomsongstudio.ca — tell us your story.
🍁 Oniatari:io — always was, always will be.
Maple Custom Song Studio · Custom Songs for Life's Most Meaningful Moments · Hamilton, Ontario, Canada — on the shores of Oniatari:io
