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France suffers from considerable lack of knowledge about its water bodies, contributing to the fact that the measurements recommended for lake and pond environments are unsuitable. The authors studied and reviewed the different existing inventories on water bodies, covering two centuries, on the national scale of France, aiming to understand the origins of the statistical misinterpretation in 2012, which has led to damage to lakes, ponds and water bodies in general. The demonstration highlights an essential factor behind the gaps in knowledge: the French government’s lack of commitment, discouraging research and leading to loss of interest, still clearly shown by the lack of proper definition of the commonly used terms such as "water body" or "pond". By supplementing qualitative and quantitative approaches used for existing inventories with an assessment of the best adapted tools currently available for constructing a water body inventory, the authors go beyond constructive criticism to produce a geomatic frame of reference for French water bodies. The accuracy of the results (surface area: 96 %; number: 98 %), meant that this survey tool for the surface area of freshwater bodies could be applied. Compared with 34,000 water bodies officially identified by the BD Carthage data base, considered reliable at the ministerial level, the newly devised geomatic frame of reference detects 554,566 water bodies in France for an area in water of 449,914 ha, amounting to 16 times the number of water bodies and an area of water one-third more than previously registered. These figures bring out the non-inclusion of the smallest water bodies (less than one ha) which are characteristic of the lacustrine features in France in the 21st Century, totally absent from present-day surface water management policies. Fully georeferenced, this new tool should constitute a solid knowledge base. Around this, considerable amounts of further research on lakes and ponds can be done, to yield reliable water quality indicators for comparison with the ECD 2000 recommended standards but also focusing on human factors, too often neglected.