Great Lakes

This term refers specifically to the five massive freshwater lakes in North America. Because it is a proper noun designating a specific geographic group, it is always capitalized. It functions as a collective proper name for a singular region, though it describes multiple bodies of water.

While the word lakes is plural, the term is typically treated as a proper entity. It is rarely used in a general sense to describe any large lakes; rather, it almost exclusively identifies the Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario system.