Lake Superior (French: Lac Supérieur) is the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by Ontario, Canada and Minnesota, United States, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and is the world's third-largest freshwater lake by volume.
In the Ojibwe language, the lake is called Gitchigumi, meaning "big water." It is also writte...
more
Lake Superior (French: Lac Supérieur) is the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by Ontario, Canada and Minnesota, United States, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and is the world's third-largest freshwater lake by volume.
In the Ojibwe language, the lake is called Gitchigumi, meaning "big water." It is also written "Gitche Gumee" as recorded by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha.
The lake was named le lac supérieur, or "Higher Lake," in the seventeenth century by French explorers because it was located above Lake Huron. It was also known as Lac Tracy during the French regime.(Nute, 1946) By the time the English arrived in this region, however, it was already well-known that there were more than two lakes, an upper and a lower. Thus, when the name was anglicized, it was said "Lake Superior...is so called on account of its being superior...
less
