Читать книгу Spanish and Indian place names of California - Nellie van de Grift Sanchez - Страница 4

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First comes the name of California herself, the sin par (peerless one), as Don Quixote says of his Dulcinea. This name, strange to say, was a matter of confusion and conjecture for many years, until, in 1862, Edward Everett Hale accidentally hit upon the explanation since accepted by historians.

Several theories, all more or less fanciful and far-fetched, were based upon the supposed construction of the word from the Latin calida fornax (hot oven), in reference either to the hot, dry climate of Lower California, or to the “sweathouses” in use among the Indians. Such theories not only presuppose a knowledge of Latin not likely to exist among the hardy men who first landed upon our western shores but also indicate a labored method of naming places quite contrary to their custom of seizing upon some direct and obvious circumstance upon which to base their choice. In all the length and breadth of California few, if any, instances exist where the Spaniards invented a name produced from the Latin or Greek in this far-fetched way. They saw a big bird, so they named the river where they saw it El Río del Pájaro (the River of the Bird), or they suffered from starvation in a certain canyon, so they called it La Cañada del Hambre (the Canyon of Hunger), or they reached a place on a certain saint’s day, and so they named it for that saint. They were practical men and their methods were simple.

In any case, since Mr. Hale has provided us with a more reasonable explanation, all such theories may be passed over as unworthy of consideration. While engaged in the study of Spanish literature, he was fortunate enough to run across a copy of an old novel, published in Toledo sometime between 1510 and 1521, in which the word California occurred as the name of a fabulous island, rich in minerals and precious stones, and said to be the home of a tribe of Amazons. This novel, entitled Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), was written by the author, García Ordonez de Montalvo, as a sequel to the famous novel of chivalry, Amadís of Gaul, of which he was the translator. The two works were printed in the same volume. Montalvo’s romance, although of small literary value, had a considerable vogue among Spanish readers of the day, and that its pages were probably familiar to the early explorers in America is proved by the fact that Bernal Díaz, one of the companions of Cortés, often mentions the Amadís, to which the story of Esplandián was attached. The passage containing the name that has since become famous in all the high-ways and by-ways of the world runs as follows: “Know that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very near to the terrestrial paradise, which was peopled by black women, without any men among them, for they were accustomed to live after the manner of Amazons. They were of strong and hardened bodies, of ardent courage and of great force. The island was the strongest in the world, from its steep rocks and great cliffs. Their arms were all of gold and so were the caparisons of the wild beasts they rode.”

It was during the period when this novel was at the height of its popularity that Cortés wrote to the King of Spain concerning information he had of “an island of Amazons, or women only, abounding in pearls and gold, lying ten days journey from Colima.” After having sent one expedition to explore the unknown waters in that direction, in 1535 or thereabout, an expedition that ended in disaster, he went himself and planted a colony at a point, probably La Paz, on the coast of Lower California. In his diary of this expedition, Bernal Díaz speaks of California as a “bay,” and it is probable that the name was first applied to some definite point on the coast, afterward becoming the designation of the whole region. The name also occurs in Preciado’s diary of Ulloa’s voyage down the coast in 1539, making it reasonable to suppose that it was adopted in the period between 1535 and 1539, whether by Cortés or some other person can not be ascertained.

Bancroft expresses the opinion that the followers of Cortés may have used the name in derision, to express their disappointment in finding a desert, barren land in lieu of the rich country of their expectations, but it seems far more in keeping with the sanguine nature of the Spaniards that their imaginations should lead them to draw a parallel between the rich island of the novel, with its treasures of gold and silver, and the new land, of whose wealth in pearls and precious metals some positive proof, as well as many exaggerated tales, had reached them.

An argument that seems to clinch the matter of the origin of the name is the extreme improbability that two different persons, on opposite sides of the world, should have invented exactly the same word, at about the same period, especially such an unusual one as California.

As for the etymology of the word itself, it is as yet an unsolved problem. The suggestion that it is compounded of the Greek root kali (beautiful), and the Latin fornix (vaulted arch), thus making its definition “beautiful sky,” may be the true explanation, but even if that be so, Cortés or his followers took it at second hand from Montalvo and were not its original inventors.

Professor George Davidson, in a monograph on the Origin and the Meaning of the Name California, states that incidental mention had been made as early as 1849 of the name as occurring in Montalvo’s novel by George Ticknor, in his History of Spanish Literature, but Mr. Ticknor refers to it simply as literature, without any thought of connecting it with the name of the state. This connection was undoubtedly first thought of by Mr. Hale and was discussed in his paper read before the Historical Society of Massachusetts in 1862; therefore the honor of the discovery of the origin of the state’s name must in justice be awarded to him. Professor Davidson, in an elaborate discussion of the possible etymology of the word, expresses the opinion that it may be a combination of two Greek words, kallos (beauty), and ornis (bird), in reference to the following passage in the book: “In this island are many griffins, which can be found in no other part of the world.” Its etymology, however, is a matter for further investigation. The one fact that seems certain is its origin in the name of the fabulous island of the novel.

It may well suffice for the fortunate heritors of the splendid principality now known as California that this charming name became affixed to it permanently, rather than the less “tuneful” one of New Albion, which Sir Francis Drake applied to it, and under which cognomen it appears on some English maps of the date.