LILEKS: Welcome to Minnesota's scenic, romantic Lake 598

Press release from PETA, the animal-rights organization: They've asked the city of Ham Lake to change the name of its namesake pond to Yam Lake, so people won't eat ham.

Wait until they find out about Chicken Lake in Meeker County.

Why was Ham Lake thus named? The original name of the town was Glen Carey, which was Scottish for "Beautiful Valley," but the Ham Lake history page says the Scandinavians couldn't pronounce that very well. Yeah, it's practically Sanskrit. So they named it Ham Lake, after the shape of the body of water.

How would they know?

"Ole, get that ladder and climb to the top and stand on your tiptoes and tell me what shape the large body of water has."

"Well, from my vantage point that's only marginally more useful than observing the shape from the ground, I'd say a ham. Or as ve say back in the old country, a skinka."

"Seriously?"

"And you can't pronounce 'Glen.' "

"Oh, we was funnin' ya. So how about it? Skinka Lake?"

"No one wants to be downwind of anything named Skinka."

"OK, Ham it is."

And that was it, I guess. Just because something is named after a creature doesn't mean someone who visits the lake, or fishes on it, or sees it on a map, wants to eat the creature. Case in point: Leech Lake.

No. Anyway, the PETA request made me call up a list of Minnesota lake names. There's over 15,000 lakes, by the way. I mean, technically yes, we are the land of 10,000 lakes, in the sense that someone who is 6 feet tall is also 5 feet 6 inches tall, if you stop measuring.

It's quite a list. There's an Elephant Lake. It does not look like an elephant, unless it was dropped from a great height.

We have 13 lakes named Bass, which PETA would not like because it might encourage fish consumption, but we can just think of them as referring to an audio frequency, or change the name to Treble Lake.

There are five Bear Lakes, but no one thinks about eating bear. Rather the opposite.

Minnesota actually has three Ham Lakes — one in the town of Ham Lake, a second in Blaine and a third in Lincoln, which also has the oddly named Fish Trap Lake. When you think about it, all lakes are traps for fish.

Wikipedia's list of Minnesota lakes says three are named "Roseau Sewage Treatment Pond," which makes you suspect the shores aren't full of cabins. Due to the skinka.

We have a Lake Shallow. It is deeper than Deep Lake.

The list could be more interesting. So many Johnson Lakes. (Not one Evinrude.) An Ember Lake and a Burgan Lake, but no Emburger Lake. Gun Lake and Knife Lake, but no Peaceful Resolution Strategy Lake. You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of lakes have no names, just numbers. It's as if the lake-namers just got tired.

"So what should we call this one? Long? Elbow? Fish? Eagle? Sturgeon? How about something French, like Lake LeLac?"

"That's Lake the Lake."

"I'm beat. Put it down as Lake 534."

Even the numbers are confusing. There are two Lake 412s, but no Lake 413. There's Lake 47702. No one ever wrote a poem about the sun setting on Lake 47702. How would that go?

"O Minnesota summer, how I long to be with you / to see sunset hit the thick green scum on 47702."

It seems as if we could do something about those numbered lakes, right? We could have a contest, and, yes, the entries would include 237 Prince Lakes and Dylan Lakes, but surely there would be enough suggestions to cover the poor nameless lakes. It might even boost tourism. Bacon Lake, for example. Lots of people would love to camp out on the shores of Bacon Lake.