Etymology of California

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish explorers and conquistadors who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822 – June 10, 1909) was an American author, historian, and Unitarian minister, best known for his writings such as "The Man Without a Country", published in Atlantic Monthly, in support of the Union during the Civil War. He was the grand-nephew of Nathan Hale, the American spy during the Revolutionary War.

George Davidson (May 9, 1825 – December 1, 1911) was a geodesist, astronomer, geographer, surveyor and engineer in the United States.

The Amazons (Ancient Greek: Ἀμαζόνες Amazónes, singular Ἀμαζών Amazōn; in Latin Amāzon, -ŏnis) were a people in Greek mythology, portrayed in a number of ancient epic poems and legends, such as the Labours of Heracles, the Argonautica and the Iliad. They were female warriors and hunters, known for their physical agility, strength, archery, riding skills, and the arts of combat. Their society was closed to men and they raised only their daughters and returned their sons to their fathers, with whom they would only socialize briefly in order to reproduce.

Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (c. 1450 – 1505) was a Castilian author who arranged the modern version of the chivalric romance Amadis of Gaul, originally written in three books in the 14th century by an unknown author. Montalvo incorporated a fourth book in the original series, and followed it with a sequel, Las sergas de Esplandián. It is the sequel that Montalvo is most often noted for, not for the book itself, but because within the book he coined the word California.

Fortún Ximénez Bertandoña (died 1533) was a Spanish sailor of Basque origin who led a mutiny during an early expedition along the coast of Mexico and is the first European known to have landed in Baja California.

Francisco de Ulloa (died 1540) was a Spanish explorer who explored the west coast of present-day Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula under the commission of Hernán Cortés. Ulloa's voyage was among the first to disprove the cartographic misconception of the existence of the Island of California.

Amadís de Gaula (in English Amadis of Gaul) (Spanish: Amadís de Gaula) (Portuguese: Amadis de Gaula, ) is an Iberian landmark work among the Spanish and Portuguese chivalric romances which were in vogue in the 16th century, although its first version, much revised before printing, was written at the onset of the 14th century in an uncertain place of the Iberian Peninsula.

The Gulf of California (Spanish: Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (Mar de Cortés) or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (Mar Vermejo), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja California peninsula from the Mexican mainland. It is bordered by the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, and Sinaloa with a coastline of approximately 4,000 km (2,500 mi). Rivers that flow into the Gulf of California include the Colorado, Fuerte, Mayo, Sinaloa, Sonora, and the Yaqui. The surface of the gulf is about 160,000 km (62,000 sq mi). Maximum depths exceed 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) because of the complex geology, linked to plate tectonics.

Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) is a novel written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The novel is a sequel to a popular fifteenth century set of chivalric romance novels, Amadís de Gaula. The name of California originated in Las Sergas de Esplandián, which featured the island of California ruled by its Queen Califia.