The name of that fictional Eden was California...The novel is believed to be where the state's name came from, Alex Vassar, a spokesman for the California State Library, told me, though the matter isn't entirely settled.
All that is known for certain is that someone, presumably a Spanish navigator, applied the name to the territory that now comprises the State of California sometime before the year 1541, when it first appeared on a map.
But the most widely accepted theory is that de Montalvo's book was so popular in the 1500s that Spanish adventurers in the New World would have known the legend of California.
#california-state-library #spanish-novel #origin-of-california-name #historical-theories #island-utopia
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]