Californian

How to spell californian

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce californian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does californian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to California, its people, climate, or culture.
2. nounA person who is native to or lives in California.

Californian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves a light californian style of cooking with fresh produce.

• noun

  As a lifelong californian, she had never owned a snow shovel.

• adjective

  Warm californian weather drew thousands of tourists to the coast each summer.

• noun

  Every californian in the office voted to keep the air conditioning low.

Where does californian come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word is built on the place name California with the suffix -ian, which English uses to form adjectives and nouns of origin or belonging. The state name itself has a colourful literary origin: it first appeared as the name of a fictional paradise island in the Spanish romance 'Las sergas de Esplandian', written by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in the early 1500s, where it was ruled by a warrior queen named Calafia. Spanish explorers, familiar with the popular tale, applied the name California to the land they reached on the Pacific coast, and it stuck. The English form californian simply attaches the long-established -ian ending, the same one seen in 'Canadian' and 'Italian'. The spelling trap is invisible: it has a single l and a single f, and the unstressed vowels make it easy to drop or double a letter by mistake.

How the word is built

• California (place name)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'relating to' or 'native of')