California Look up California at Dictionary.com
name of an imaginary realm in "Las sergas de Esplandián" ("Exploits of Espladán"), a romance by Sp. writer Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo, published in 1510, which was said to have been influential among Sp. explorers of the New World and may have led them to misidentify Baja California as this land and mistake it for an island. Where Montalvo got the name and what it means, if anything, is a mystery. Californian is attested from 1785.