Etymology of California
Today, the name California is shared by many places throughout the world, but is most commonly associated with areas of the southwest United States, and northwest Mexico.
Sus armas eran todas de oro y del mismo metal eran los arneses de las bestias salvajes que ellas acostumbraban domar para montarlas, porque en toda la isla no había otro metal que el oro.
[6]Know, then, that, on the right hand of the Indies, there is an island called California, very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons.
[7] Hale supposed that in inventing the names, de Montalvo held in his mind the Spanish word califa, the term for a leader of an Islamic community.
[8] Chapman elaborated on this connection in 1921: There can be no question but that a learned man like Ordóñez de Montalvo was familiar with The Song of Roland...This derivation of the word California can perhaps never be proved, but it is also plausible—and it may be added too interesting—to be overlooked.
[16] Polk wrote that another scholar offered the interestingly plausible suggestion that Roland's Califerne is a corruption of the Persian Kar-i-farn, a mythological "mountain of Paradise" where griffins lived.
[16] French historian Prosper Boissonnade [es] wrote in 1923 that a fortified city named Kal-Ifrene or Kalaa-Ifrene was located about four days march south of Bougie in Algeria.
Morz est mis nies, ki tant me fist cunquere Encuntre mei revelerunt li Seisne, E Hungre e Bugre e tante gent averse, Romain, Puillain et tuit icil de Palerne E cil d'Affrike e cil de Califerne; Dead is my nephew, who conquered so much for me!
[8] Several alternate theories have been proposed as possible origins of the word California, but they all have been dismissed, or at least determined by historians to be less compelling than the novel, Las sergas de Esplandián.
[18] Hernán Cortés is often credited with being the first to apply the name California to the Baja Peninsula, but researchers believe it was more likely one of the men he assigned to do some advance exploration of the South Sea.
Diego de Becerra and Fortún Ximénez, under the direction of Cortés, landed near the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula in 1533.
[23] Cortés did not reach the Baja peninsula until 1535, when he tried unsuccessfully to establish a colony that he named La Paz, under a royal charter granting him that land.
[citation needed] It has also been suggested that Hernando de Alarcón, sent by the viceroy Mendoza—an enemy of Cortés—on a 1540 expedition to verify Cortés's discoveries, referred to the inhospitable lands as California, and it was he who named the peninsula after the fabled island in Las sergas.
Alarcón provides a clear link from the literary, imaginary California to the real place, but his usage cannot be proven to be the actual origin, in that the name may predate him.
