Talk:Lake Geneva

message: Lac Léman is used only by French people (to remember us that a small corner belong to France) and frustrated minor towns around Lake Geneva, they can't stand this name "Lac de Genève".
I'm a Geneva citizen, you can belive me, we call it Lac de Genève or simply "le Lac".
* Wow, this is nicely POV. It would be more correct to say that Lac Léman is the official name in French (and therfore used by every French speaker, excpet ---as the above comment seems to demonstrate--- by a some inhabitants from Geneva who think they are the center of the world). However, it is true, that in english the name Lake Geneva is much more common. As this is the English Wikipedia, the article should be named Lake Geneva
* This is factually plain wrong. Lac Léman is the official name, not just in France (rather half of the lake, not a small corner, belongs to France), but also the entire Swiss area surrounding the lake which is francophone (this means french-speaking). Calling the cities of Lausanne, Montreux, Evian, Thonon, etc, "frustrated" is childish. As a citizen of Geneva, I call the lake "Lac Léman", and it is the official name on all the maps and signs in Geneva. Informally, we call it "Lac DE Genève", which means Lake OF Geneva, but certainly never Lac Genève. Calling it Lake Geneva is therefore wrong and lazy. Just because more people on Google are wrong and lazy does not make it true.  
Resident of Montreux syas:  Actually Lac Leman is not used by frustrated 'French' on the south shore.  The rest of the lake is surrounded by French speaking Swiss who prefer use 'Lac Leman'.  The Swiss of the region do not like the term Lake Geneva since it suggests the lake is an extension of Geneva, when actually Geneva is at the very end of the lake as it runs into the Rhone river.  Swiss in Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux and all towns feel offended when thelake is assigned as the property of Geneva.  Lac Leman is the correct name.
:I am a Geneva citizen too. I usually call the lake Leman "Lake geneva". However, I and every one knows it is in fact called lake Leman. Only people from Geneva call it the lake Geneva. As a Scuba diver I see many people from around the lake (of whom people from Geneva is just a minority), and it is true they feel ofended when people from Geneva call it Lake Geneva. I suppose english people erroneously believe it is called lake Geneva because of the international status of Geneva: thus english speaking people mostly meet people from Geneva which are the only people using the unofficial name "lake Geneva". Do what you want with this, but it is a fact that 1) The official name is Lake Leman 2) Only in Geneva is it called lake Geneva (and every one knows it is not the official name)
3) I would say in Geneva people call it lake Geneva and lake Leman 50% of the time... In views of these facts, the page needs to mention this naming ambiguity. --Powo 00:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Geneva citizen

message: On french TV the name of lake Geneva is as well used. But "lac léman" is more right. I live in Geneva as well and my friend and me say lac léman... 
--195.65.51.14 18:48, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: French TV

message: I think you will find that the official (Swiss) name in French is "Le Léman". That name is used as the title for sheet #40 of the Swiss National Map (1:100.000 series: http://www.swisstopo.ch/en/products/analog/maps/tk100), and many other references can be found here: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9man_%28homonymie%29. I agree with others below that the lake is popularly referred to by the Swiss as "Lac Léman". I've lived in Geneva for 30 years and never heard "Lac de Genève", although there are so many new arrivals, foreigners and tourists that anything goes... You will also hear local English speakers say "the Léman"  62.203.65.11 17:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Swiss map

message: Though "Lac Léman is more common in French and also used in Geneva parralel to "Lac de Genève", le Former (lac de Genève) is used in Genevan official documents and law. Saying the "Lac de Genève" is not in use in French is therefore demonstratibly incorrect (http://www.ge.ch/legislation/rsg/main.html).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:120B:2C6D:6AC0:B045:2C8B:1F17:9E62 (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Official documents in Geneva

message: As a true local, born and educated in Geneva, i can affirm that "Lake Geneva" or "Lac de Genève" is considered and *error*; this name is mostly used if you want to piss off people from Lausanne (call it "le petit village de pêcheurs au bord du lac de Genève") ;P  otherwise, the correct name is Leman Lake (or Lake Léman, whichever..) and it is the name that has been used looooong before the erroneous "Lake Geneva" was introduced (if I recall correctly, originally to describe the lower, thin portion of the lake near Geneva). Even though a vast amount of people uses the incorrect name "Lake Geneva", the correct and official name is "Leman Lake" and  the article should be moved to "Leman Lake". ---- 
Konrad-EN (talk) 08:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Original name

message: As pointed out earlier, the issue is not what French-speaking people call it, but what English-speaking people call it. I agree that in French is is "Lac Leman", whether you are French, Swiss, or any other nationality.  But in English, it is "Lake Geneva", as far as I know (and I live there).  And in German it is "Genfersee".--Gautier lebon (talk) 10:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed Lake Léman as an alternate English name from the lede based on the Ngram data here. Doremo (talk) 17:34, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  English-language name

message: The most common English-Language map search engine, Google Maps, accurately names it Leman, it should be Leman. Calling it Lake Geneva is incorrect and ignorant. There is a lake Geneva in Wisconsin, USA. Someone mentioned the German language, which is irrelevant, as it is neither the language of this article, nor a local language. German is not the language spoken in this Canton of Switzerland. Italian is also an official language of another area of Switzerland, and it's called Lago Lemano in Italian.
Mary Shelley, the famous English writer, referred to it as lake Leman. So did Lord Byron, so did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by AntonioGramsci2011 (talk • contribs) 20:27, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google Maps

message: Are thre fish in it again? are they safe to eat? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.20 (talk) 01:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: fish?

message: This article was automatically  assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 04:36, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: It seems that there are contradicting assertions for both Lake Leman and Lake Balaton in Hungary. Both claim to be the largest lake in Central Europe, but the surface area clearly indicates Balaton is the largest (making Leman the second largest). A quick survey of several sites seem to confirm this, although the surface areas for Balaton seem to differ slightly. Any reason why the comment on the largest lake in C.E. should remain for lake Leman? --mexicatl 16:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Surface Area Comparison to Lake Balaton 

message: The assertion that the lake is the largest in Western Europe requires that one consider (as the UN Statistics Division) Scandinavia + Finland (which both have larger lakes) to be outside Western Europe. This is OK, although UNESCO has another definition (see article about Western Europe).
It is however more problematic to exclude the Netherlands from Western Europe. Although we are talking about lakes that have been created, Markermeer and Lake Yssel are both larger. See: List of largest lakes of Europe. Changes should hence be made in at least one of the three mentioned articles.
ErikHWiki (talk) 13:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this should be corrected, please see Talk:Lake Geneva#Strange claims removed.--Gautier lebon (talk) 11:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Largest in Western Europe?

message: I removed the anon-added "It is useful to know for visitors that in places around the lake other than Geneva, the use of the name Lac de Genève might be considered offensive, while Lac Léman is a mark of respect" as an over-the-top unsourced POV addition. As we would say in those places around the lake other than Geneva, "faut quand même pas déconner non plus". 
You'll have to bring serious references, preferably also in French, to support the notion that a foreigner referring to it as "Lake Geneva" in Lausanne is being offensive. MLauba (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Lake Geneva is considered offensive outside Geneva": reverted per BRD 

message: I removed the claims about the lake being the largest in Western Europe and the largest freshwater lake in Continental Europe, as neither is correct. Look at lakes like Lake Vänern or Lake Saimaa, not to mention Lake Ladoga. There are a lot of other lakes, all larger that Lake Geneva, in Russia, Sweden and Finland, all of which are part of Continental Europe.Jeppiz (talk) 12:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point.  Lake Lagoda is not in Western Europe, and apparently the citation  used a definition of "Western Europe" which excluded Finland and Sweden (and also excluded Estonia).  There is a good list at List_of_largest_lakes_of_Europe.  On that basis, I support your deletion.  But I've added a link to that list, so that people can see for themselves how big it is in relative terms.--Gautier lebon (talk) 11:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Perfect, thanks! :-) Jeppiz (talk) 12:51, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Strange claims removed

message: The current english version of the page says "Lemannus comes from Ancient greek Limanos, Limènos Limne Λιμένος Λίμνη meaning port's lake;" The german version says
the name comes from the celtic "lem" and "an" which means "big" and "water". The french version says it likely comes from that (but origin is unknown). So which of all these is true? Signof (talk) 12:22, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of name

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I've just moved the article back from Lake Leman to Lake Geneva, reverting the most recent of attempted moves by user AntonioGramsci2011. (It has been at Lake Geneva for the last decade or so.) 
The title of Lake Geneva lines up with the official Wikipedia policy of WP:COMMONNAME. Usage of Lake Leman in English is extremely rare. As user Doremo mentioned below, this is obvious from a quick look at Google results or a search of books from Ngram data here. 
Furthermore, the lake is referred to as Lake Geneva by not only the overwhelming majority of sources in English, but also the English-language versions of Swiss government and tourist websites, including geneve.com, papers by the Geneva local government in English and Swiss railway maps published in English.
What locals call the lake does not matter for the title of the English-language page. Residents of the capital of Algeria refer to their city as  الجزائر‎ or approximately Al-Jazāʾir, yet the page is titled Algiers. It is Wikipedia policy (again, WP:COMMONNAME) to use the common English name.
I hope this can conclusively resolve the matter. OwenVersteeg (talk) 04:03, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: To support this further: fr:Londres is the French Wikipedia article for the capital of the United Kingdom, titled using the French common name for the city, rather than the name by which it is known in its native English. In the same way as the English Lake Geneva article lists the names used in French (and German), the French article for London lists the city's name in English. Bazza (talk) 09:16, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Name of article

message: I thought this place was a space for knowledge. You are wiping the history and the knowledge itself by naming this fabulous lake with a wrong name just because "most foreign people call it this way". There's no doubt of it as people now take wikipedia as the reference and it has been showing a wrong name for too long. It is indeed easier to remember the lake with a such name when you're a foreigner as the current biggest city around is Geneva, but that doesn't mean it is correct and it should be called like that. It has already been proven by many people here that the true and official name is «Lac Léman», «Leman Lake» in English, and the fact that so many people know the name wrong is a major argument to call this article back by the official and historical name of the lake: «Leman Lake», as they would learn something.
It is even more important as today everything leads to wikipedia/wikidata, even web mapping are linked to it and use its content. So naming things by wrong names just because most people knows it a certain way is for sure disrespectful but it is also a big issue as it will be shown and used with the wrong name on other things like maps.
Plus, as you seem to take Google as a reference, I first suggest you to search on it «Geneva Lake», you'll se that it shows the lake in Wisconsin, not Leman Lake. Then you should go on Google Maps and have a look on how the lake is named on the map. 92.132.227.136 (talk) 06:42, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The great brainwashing...