tl;dr: Places were named for a variety of reasons. The pre-contact Indigenous names often were based on specific geographic features, animals names, spiritual features, and historic events and legends. After Europeans arrived, Europeans used pre-existing Indigenous names when possible and supplemented them with French and later English-language names related to fur trade routes and posts. During the surveying of northern Ontario in the 1870s-1900s, Indigenous names were used when possible (though often translated into English), and occasionally renamed altogether and given people's names. When Euro-Canadian settlers showed up in the early 1900s, older naming conventions persisted, though places were now often named primarily after important people and places back in England. French names made a reappearance with increased French settlement in the area. Similar naming conventions persist to this day, though there is a side movement about decolonizing Indigenous place and community names.

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[PART 1/3]

This is a really interesting question because toponyms and immensely important in archaeology. Understanding the reason places have certain names can tell a lot about the people and the history of an area.

I can't speak for the rest of Ontario, let alone North America, but my area of specialization is in North(east)ern Ontario, specifically the Timmins-Frederick House Lake-Nighthawk Lake area.

You may have noticed that Northern Ontario is filled with towns with both European language names (Sudbury, Timmins, Cobalt, North Bay, Val Gagné, Sturgeon Falls, etc.) and Indigenous names (Kapuskasing, Temagami, Temiskaming, Matachewan, Mattagami, etc). Not only towns, but lakes, rivers, and other geographic places as well have European (Nighthawk Lake, Montreal River, Iroquois Falls, etc) and Indigenous (Mattagami River, Lake Obabika, Lake Abitibi, etc) names. The reasons for this are multiple and wrapped in the history of the area.

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INDIGENOUS NAMES

The local indigenous languages include Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, in this case) and Cree, but I'm more familiar with Anishinaabe place names. Please keep in mind that the language is not standardized and there will be many variants of the names used in this text.

Locally, place names in Anishinaabe tend to fall within three or four categories: geographic feature descriptors, animal names, and spiritual/event names, the two former being the most common today. We can't be sure when these names originate, but many stem from the pre-contact period, evidenced by the accounts of the First Europeans in the area.

If we want to talk about place names in the pre-contact times, we first have to learn about the names groups use to refer to themselves because that's the earliest documentary evidence we have (other than oral history). These original names tend to be given to geographic landforms (lakes, rivers, mountains, etc.) instead of towns because Indigenous people in northern Ontario didn't live in towns. During resource-rich seasons, people gathered seasonal settlements at important points such as waterfalls, the confluence of rivers, and large lakes.

Based on the Europeans accounts (a topic which is fraught with misunderstandings and simplifications, but that's a topic for another day), it does not seem people identified themselves based on their culture (I'm Ojibwe, I'm Cree, I'm Algonquin; these cultural descriptors developed after the arrival of Europeans). Rather, it seems that people identified themselves based on the large waterbodies on which they gather. For example, the Jesuit Relations, the English Hudson Bay Company (HBC) traders in Hudson and James Bays, and the French traders at Fort Timiskaming record the names of many people of the north, including the Abitibis, the Temiscamingues, the Temagamis, the Piscotagemies, and the Nipissings among many, many others.

These ethnonyms are all based on the names of large local lakes, suggesting people identified themselves as belonging to a group which seasonally gathers on that particular waterbody. Someone in the past might say "I'm from Abitibi" much in the same way we'd nowadays say "I'm from Toronto". The Nipissings are from Lake Nipissing area, the Abitibis are from the Lake Abitibi area, the Temiscamingues are from the Lake Timiskaming area, etc. Some of these names were translated into English (e.g. Nighthawk Lake from Piscoutagami), but the meaning remains the same. This suggests the current names of these waterbodies existed long before the arrival of Europeans and were important to the identity of the local inhabitants.

Now, on to the specific names and their meanings.

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Geographic Name Descriptors

These types of names describe a particular physical aspect of the lake, river, or other landform such as its size, depth, location, temperature, colour, resources, etc. Lake Timiskaming, for example, refers to the "deep water" of the lake (the lake is over 700 feet deep). Lake Temagami similarly refers to "deep water by the shore". Mattagami Lake (originally matawagamingue), means "meeting of the waters" and refers to the confluence of multiple rivers at the head of the lake. Despite being a big lake, Lake Nipissing means "little water", in comparison to the nearby Great Lakes. Ishpatina Ridge, the highest point in Ontario, means "high place/ridge". The Yorston River is known in Ojibwe as Wu-numman Zipi, meaning red mud river in reference to the pigment red ochre which can be found in its vicinity (Conway 1993). Peawanuck is a Cree word meaning "flintstone", referring to the toolstone resources found in the area. Modern Frederick House Lake was known as waanadaawangaa, meaning "hollow sand" or "there is a depression in the sand" and refers either to the lake's shallow depth (a lake in a large, sandy, shallow depression) or as Parks (1899:177) puts it,

"The Indian name is Wanatangua, meaning Hollow Sand. I am inclined to think that this name is derived from the fact that the clay shores are covered in places by a layer of sand which gives way on being pressed by the foot."

As the previous examples show, these names and many others are all derived from physical descriptions of the landform.

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Animal Names

Animal names are commonly used as place names as well. A lot of these names have been translated into English, such as Nighthawk Lake (Piscoutagami), Rabbit Lake, Jumping Caribou Lake, Bear Island, Whitefish Lake, Groundhog River, and Moose River. I'm not sure why these animals are chosen as the lake name, but it might have to do with a certain animal being abundant in the area (e.g. whitefish are present in the Whitefish River) or a certain animal-related event (e.g. Jumping Caribou Lake).

Some places may be associated with the spirit of a particular animal too, though it's unknown if the name is derived from the spirit's presence or if the spirit is associated with the place because of its name. For example, nighthawks are present in abundance and nest on the shores of Nighthawk Lake, but the lake is also associated with the nighthawk spirit. When recounting the story of the massacre at the HBC post on Frederick House Lake, just north of Nighthawk Lake, the daughter of the sole survivor described the beginning of the story as such:

"When they got to the lake, a storm was on. They started to cross the lake, man and son, going ahead and wife behind. Storm got bad and man and son reached post okay but woman not showed up. Stormed all night so did not go to look for her until morning and man in charge of post went with them, They found woman frozen stiff on ice. They went crazy mad and blamed the Night Hawk spirit of killing woman and then thought it was a plan made up to kill them so they killed the Hudson's Bay Company trader and went back to post and killed the woman who was living as wife with trader." [emhasis mine] (Unknown, n.d.:22)

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Spiritual Names

My specialization is not the spiritual aspect of Indigenous cultures, so I feel less comfortable talking about it and I'll keep this section short.

Some places are named for spirits which reside there or for spiritual landforms. While some places may be named for animal spirits (see section above), others are named for the place's direct association with specific spiritual features. Manitoulin Island, for example, was known as "manidoowaaling" in Odawa, meaning "cave of the spirit".

I can't remember any specific sources for this next one and my spelling is also probably off, but Sansajawu Mountain is located on Ferris Lake and means "monster turkey mountain", though I suspect this refers to the thunderbird, a powerful spirit creature, and not a big turkey... In addition to oral history telling us it is a spiritual place, there are also pictographs of the thunderbird on the waterside cliffs of the mountain, more evidence of the mountain's importance.