01.11.08
Island of the Griffins
It’s well known to anyone who has bothered to look that the name “California” originally appeared in a popular Spanish romance by Garcia Rodriguez de Montalvo, published about 1510. Montalvo seemed to have based the name of his fictional land upon a place known to his readers, whether real or legendary:
In this island called California, because of the great ruggedness of the country and the innumerable wild beasts that lived in it, there were many griffins, such as were found in no other part of the world.
Montalvo imagined this island called California east of the Indies, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that when a rugged, griffin-inhabited island was discovered west of America, that it occurred to a Spaniard to call the island “California”.
Yes, you read that right: griffins in California. UCLA’s L. T. White reported that Bisselius insisted
… in 1647, that in California “griffins (gryphes) are found; and this is not a fable but the truth.”
By such statements, it’s easy to see how the name California stuck.
Now we know today that Baja California is no island, but a peninsula, and we also know that no griffins inhabit California. Or do we?
There is actually a very large Californian raptor that once had the scientific name Pseudogryphus californiacus, and for good reason. Today we call it the California condor. It is not even the state bird, yet it may have been one of the primary reasons—or even the primary reason—why California got its name from a romance novel.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
