Windermere wilderness

Since joining The Telegraph Announcements team, I have been quite pernickety about geographical terms.  Yorkshire is always a big battle - North Yorkshire can have a capital 'n' for 'north' but east, west and south Yorkshire must all be lower-cased for their geographical location (though one can have the East Riding of Yorkshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire).  Incidentally, I did something of a record for myself yesterday - though I have placed more than 42 advertisements previously, the units were 4,931 (essentially 493 column centimetres depth), raising £16,721.68.  I had some massive ads, one cost £648, another £930, there was a school notice in there and the thanksgiving service for Lady Diana Kemp-Welch costs nearly £4,000, with a staggering 250 lines (4 lines to a column centimetre depth).
Windermere is one however that everyone should know about and that Gary Lineker called it Lake Windermere on last night's Sports Relief.  Of course, he's reading off an autocue, so the person who conceived the script should get a slap but Windermere is famous for its sports and Lineker should have picked up that.  In place names, 'mere' means lake.  Would you say the Rio Grande River, Gary?
Deserts are another trouble, even for professional atlas makers.  Sahara should never have the suffix of 'desert' as the local name name for desert is Sahara.  But the same goes for Gobi - desert in Mongolian - yet even respectable atlases have Gobi Desert.  Grr.