Introduction:
California is a U.S. state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.5 million residents, California is the most populous state in the United States and the third largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation’s second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 8.8 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California’s most populous city, and the country’s second-most populous, after New York City.
California’s $2.8 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state. If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world, larger than the UK or France. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation’s second- and third-largest urban economies at $1.2 trillion and $821 billion respectively as of 2016, after the New York City metropolitan area.
California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation, and politics. It is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, the Internet, and the personal computer. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and entertainment industries, respectively. California has a very diverse economy: 58% of the state’s economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state’s economy, California’s agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state.
California is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and the Mexican state of Baja California to the south. The state’s diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, and from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state’s center. Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
Origin of the Name:
The word California originally referred to the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico; it was later extended to the entire region composed of the current U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming.
Spanish explorer Francisco de Ulloa‘s initial surveys of the Baja California Peninsula exploring the western coast of North America led him to believe that it was an island rather than part of the larger continent.
The name likely derived from the mythical island California in the fictional story of Queen Calafia, as recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. This work was the fifth in a popular Spanish chivalric romance series that began with Amadis de Gaula. Queen Calafia’s kingdom was said to be a remote land rich in gold and pearls, inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and lived like Amazons, as well as griffins and other strange beasts. In the fictional paradise, the ruler Queen Calafia fought alongside Muslims and her name may have been chosen to echo the title of a Muslim leader, the Caliph. It’s possible the name California was meant to imply the island was a Caliphate.