When my children were young, they took great pride in instructing visitors: there is only one lake in the Lake District- the rest are meres or waters or tarns. There is Windermere, Wastwater, Coniston Water, Sprinkling Tarn, Ullswater, Buttermere. The names roll off the tongue, quirky and evocative. Only Bassenthwaite requires the addition of the word "lake" to pin it down.
I was gratified that my older daughter, now in her late thirties, and visiting from London, was horrified when she read a tourist leaflet mentioning "Lake Windermere". I have been raging about this particular bit of local dumbing down for some time. Why can't visitors be instructed? Are all our visitors so stupid, that they can't understand that "mere" and "water" mean "lake"? It seems to me that this is a concession to our visitors that they neither need nor want. We underestimate people's ability to absorb knowledge and enjoy learning new words and concepts. Our visitors used to chuckle when caught out by our children. They took away a little bit of extra knowledge; a tiny mental enrichment; a small link to the past.
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