The words _Ohio, Ontario_ and _Onontio_ (or _Yonnondio_)--which should properly be pronounced as if written _Oheeyo, Ontareeyo,_ and _Ononteeyo_--are commonly rendered "Beautiful River," "Beautiful Lake," "Beautiful Mountain." This, doubtless, is the meaning which each of the words conveys to an Iroquois of the present day, unless he belongs to the Tuscarora tribe. But there can be no doubt that the termination _io_ (otherwise written _iyo, iio, eeyo_, etc.) had originally the sense, not of "beautiful," but of "great." It is derived from the word _wiyo_ (or _wiio_) which signifies in the Seneca dialect _good,_ but in the Tuscarora, _great_. It is certain that the Tuscaroras have preserved the primitive meaning of the word, which the Hurons and the proper Iroquois have lost. When the French missionaries first studied the languages of these nations, traces of the original usage were apparent. Bruyas, in the "Proemium" to his _Radices Verborum Iroquaorum_, (p. 14), expressly states that _jo (io)_ in composition with verbs, "signifies magnitude." He gives as an example, _garihaioston_, "to make much of anything," from _garihea_, thing, and _io_, "great, important." The Jesuit missionaries, in their _Relation_ for 1641, (p. 22) render _Onontio_ "great mountain," and say that both Hurons and Iroquois gave this title to the Governor of that day as a translation of his name, Montmagny. _Ontario_ is derived from the Huron _yontare_, or _ontare_, lake (Iroquois, _oniatare_), with this termination. It was not by any means the most beautiful of the lakes which they knew; but in the early times, when the Hurons dwelt on the north and east of it and the Iroquois on the south, it was to both of them emphatically "the great lake." _Ohio,_ in like manner, is derived, as M. Cuoq in the valuable notes to his Lexicon (p. 159) informs us, from the obsolete _ohia,_ river, now only used in the compound form _ohionha_. _Ohia_, coalescing with this ancient affix, would become _ohiio,_ or _ohiyo,_ with the signification of "great river," or, as the historian Cusick renders it, "principal stream."