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They named the land California. Initially, California applied only to Baja California Peninsula; however, as Spanish explorers and settlers moved north and inland, the region known as California, or Las Californias, grew.
- What Does “California” Mean?
- Las Sergas de Esplandián: A 16th Century Novel
- Who Was Queen Calafia?
- Don Quixote and Burned Books
- Knights and Conquistadors
- A Medieval Hero
- A Real Place
- The Barbary Coast
- The New Barbary Coast
- From Fantasy to Reality — Back
There are many of theories about where the name California comes from. Some suspect that the word “California” comes from the Latin or Spanish phrases for “hot furnace” (calida fornax in Latin or caliente hornoin Spanish). One California pioneer, Josefa Carrillo de Fitch, was convinced that California was an indigenous word. When interviewed about ...
While it is difficult to verify Josefa’s theory, the most widely accepted origin of the name California comes from a Spanish novel written in the 16th century, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián), by Garcí Rodríguez de Montalvo. Montalvo is best known for writing one of the most popular action/adventure stories in Spain, Amadís de...
Published in Seville in 1510, before Europeans and reached the northern Pacific coast, Las Sergasrecounts the adventures of a knight named Esplandián, the son of Amadís, the hero of Montalvo’s earlier novel. During an important juncture in the novel, Esplandián has to help defend the city of Constantinople. Among those assaulting the city is a grou...
According to Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz, Montalvo was influenced by stories from Christopher Columbus and other explorers about the marvels of the New World. Chivalric or knightly novels like Amadis and Las Sergas were very popular in sixteenth-century Spain, so popular that Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, the madness of ...
We know that Spanish conquistadors were reading books of chivalry. Bernal Diaz de Castillo, who was a soldier in Cortez’ campaign against the Aztecs, says that the first time he and his comrades saw the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, “We were amazed. We said it looked like the enchanted things they tell of in the book of Amadís.” (The True History ...
400 years before Montalvo’s novel, a very similar name appears in one of the most important epic poems of all time, the medieval Song of Roland. Montalvo surely read the Song of Roland, since his characters are all connected to the poem. The Song of Rolandtells the story of the famous king Charlemagne, and his most heroic knight Roland. As is commo...
According to an article in journal of the Historical Society of Southern California in 1923, there were a number of fortified cities located along the coast of North Africa during the Middle Ages, “some of them famed for their magnificence as well as for their strength, and the Arabic word for this type of town was kalaaor kalat…this word was used ...
According to the article, Kal-Ifrene “was the queen city of Barbary in the XI century,” which eventually fell in the middle of the twelfth century. The term “Barbary” was used to refer to the lands of the Berber people of North Africa and is what is collectively referred to today as the Magreb. Since the early middle ages privateers from the North ...
But you may also be familiar with the name “Barbary ” because it is associated with the city of San Francisco, which had a rough reputation in the 19th century. In the 1850s and 1860s the city’s notorious red light district was so dangerous that sailors referred to it as the “Barbary Coast.” If you weren’t careful, you might not make it out alive. ...
T.S. Eliot is supposed to have said, “Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.” Whether or not you consider Garcí Rodríguez de Montalvo a great writer — Cervantes sure didn’t –, he seems to have taken the name California from the Song of Roland, thereby turning a real place into a land of fantasy. But isn’t that what California has always been...
Jan 3, 2023 · The story of a 16th-century novel, in combination with the native inhabitants and the Spanish missionaries, makes a very convincing case for the name origin of California. Still, one other argument that is made for the origin of the name is the two words derived from the Old Spanish Calit Fornay.
Apr 16, 2024 · It took decades to correct the mistaken belief that California was an island, but the name stuck and came to be associated with much of the western edge of the continent.
Jun 24, 2024 · One popular theory suggests that when Spanish explorers stumbled upon the Baja California Peninsula, they decided to call it California after a fictional island described in a 16th-century Spanish romance novel called Las Serges de Esplandian.
Oct 26, 2023 · The name California, with its mellifluous charm, evokes images of palm trees, golden beaches, and the glinting Pacific. However, the origins of the state’s name are rooted not in historical fact but rather in a work of fiction, a testament to the power of literature and imagination.
1 day ago · California, constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted as the 31st state of the union on September 9, 1850, and by the early 1960s it was the most populous U.S. state.
