Who Would Have Thought?

Itasca.

The lake that is the headwaters of the Mississippi.

I always assumed that it was a native name.

Wrong. Very wrong.

Believe it or not is comes from a Latin phrase:

Veritas caput.

Let me show you that again:

ver-ITAS CA-put.

Yep. It's a fake name.

Here's the entry from Wikipedia:

The Ojibwe name for "Lake Itasca" was Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake); this was changed by Henry Schoolcraft to "Itasca", coined from a combination of the Latin words veritas ("truth") and caput ("head") though it is sometimes misinterpreted as "true head." It is one of several examples of pseudo-Indian place names created by Schoolcraft.

I am crushed.