The Seneca Indian name, Canandaigua, has been translated as "a place selected for a settlement" and as "the chosen place." The principal inlet is Naples Creek, at the southern end of the Lake. The Canandaigua Outlet is at the northern end. Canandaigua Lake is fifteen and a half miles long, one and a half miles wide, and has a shoreline of just under 36 miles. The Lake is 276 feet deep at its deepest point, has a volume of 445.5 billion gallons, and has a watershed of 174 square miles. Almost half of the watershed is forested with beech, birch, hemlock, and oak. The quality of the Lake's median hard water is high.

    Squaw Island, a half acre island at the northern end of the Lake, is owned by the State of New York and maintained by the Department of Environmental Conservation. It was named during General Sullivan's campaign against the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederation in 1779, when women and children of the Seneca village of Kanandarque, on the site of Canandaigua, hid on the Island to escape from Sullivan's soldiers.