The situation actually is the other way around. Lake Ontario was the name of the lake before even the City or province of Ontario existed though.
Iroquoian word "Ontarí:io," meaning "great lake" or "beautiful water," and was in use by at least 1639, long before the province or city of Ontario were established.
He is basically insulting native Americans. Also note the date. It's almost 400 years ago that it was first recorded.
A bit more history...
Yes. Iroquoian languages were spoken on both sides of the present-day U.S.–Canada border—the border came much later than the peoples and languages.
The broader Iroquoian language family included peoples in what are now:
° New York and parts of the northeastern United States: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora
° Southern Ontario and the Great Lakes: Wendat (Huron), Petun, Neutral, and related communities
° The Southeast U.S.: Cherokee, whose language is also Iroquoian but geographically more distant
The name Ontario is generally connected to a Wendat/Huron term associated with the lake. The Wendat homeland was mainly in what is now southern Ontario, but their trade, migration, alliances, and conflicts extended into areas now within the United States.
So “Iroquoian” does not mean exclusively Canadian—and neither does the history of the Great Lakes.
The region’s Indigenous history predates the modern national border by thousands of years.
