The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

California

The first description of California was written in Spain in about 1510, which is odd because, at the time, no European had been to the western coast of the Americas. But fiction usually beats fact to the punch.

The description was written by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo, and the reason that he was able to write it with such authority was that California was an entirely fictional place.

Montalvo wrote and compiled stories of high and wonderful chivalry. He had knights in gleaming armour, dragons, sorcerers, maidens in distress, and wonderful exotic locations that he populated with fantastic creatures. In his fourth book, the Exploits of Esplandian, he invented a strange island that was near to the lost Garden of Eden.[24]

Montalvo wrote:

This gives you some idea of Montalvo’s imagination, and also of why the promise of these strong-bodied, sex-starved ladies might have appealed to the lusty Spanish explorers who were sailing off to the New World. We know that Christopher Columbus’ son owned a copy of Montalvo’s work, and Cortés, the first European to enter the Pacific, referred to it in a letter of 1524. What’s more, the place we now call California was thought to be an island at the time.

Of course, California was never actually an island, but owing to a mistake by an exploratory monk, European map-makers believed that it was an island from the sixteenth century up until about 1750. How the explorers got it so wrong is unclear,[25] but as late as 1716 an English geographer was able to write:

Which is good enough for me, and it was good enough for the Spaniards who were deciding what to name this temperate paradise. The explorers decided to name it after the magical land of ferocious (and attractive) women who had appeared in Montalvo’s chivalric fantasy.

Montalvo called his island California because it was ruled by a beautiful queen called Calafia. In the Exploits of Esplandian, Calafia has been persuaded to bring her army of ferocious (and attractive) women, plus some trained griffins, to fight alongside Muslims and against Christians at the siege of Constantinople. However, Calafia falls in love with Esplandian, is defeated, taken prisoner and converts to Christianity. Then she returns to the island of California with her Spanish husband, and her trained griffins.

There are several theories as to why Montalvo chose the name Calafia, but by far the most convincing is that, as she was fighting alongside Muslims, her name was chosen to suggest or echo the title of the Muslim leader: the Caliph. So California is really, ultimately, etymologically the last surviving Caliphate.

The Caliphate, a sometimes factual and sometimes formal union of all Islamic states, was abolished by the Young Turks of Turkey in 1924. Recently there have been strenuous and violent attempts to revive the Caliphate by Al Qaeda. However, if a troop of crack etymologists could be sent into terrorist strongholds, they could gently explain that the Caliphate never disappeared: it’s alive and well and is, in fact, the most populous state in America.