You may have heard by now that a California county supervisor has proposed that several counties secede from California and create the new state of South California, based on the principles that taxes and illegal immigrants are bad and that state legislators should work part-time. It’s pretty clear that he didn’t really think this through: “South California” is a terrible name for the state he’s proposing, for a couple of reasons:
- Parts of regular California would be south of large sections of South California.
- Geography was never my strong suit, but I’m pretty sure there’s a state called South Carolina. People are always going to confuse the two, especially when addressing envelopes, since South Carolina already has the “SC” state abbreviation.
So I think we should help this guy out, and try to think of a better name for the proposed state. Here are a few ideas:
- East California, because that’s what it looks like on the map.
- Dry California, because it would be cut off from most of the coast and other California water sources.
- West Arizona, because it would be politically more like Arizona than California. Also, it’s just to the west of Arizona.
- Texas Lite, because parts of the South California proposal sound kind of Texas-y.
- LI (pronounced “Fifty-One”), because it would be the 51st state. Also, it could be its own postal abbreviation.
- Fifty-One (pronounced “LI”). This would be the nation’s first hyphenated state name.
- Some other name, to be chosen by a corporate sponsor. It seems only natural that the new state would look for corporate sponsorship to raise revenue as a way to minimize taxes.
I have to admit, I’m feeling a little rejected — the county that I live in was “purposely excluded” from South California because it “just enacted a ban on plastic grocery bags”. I understand the reasoning, though — South California supporters care deeply about their plastic grocery bags, which is why they will probably choose the plastic grocery bag as their official state bird. And just to show that there are no hard feelings, I’ve designed a new flag for the new state. It’s based on the California state flag, with a few subtle differences:
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Of course, this is just a first draft — if they change the name, then the lettering on the flag would change, and if they get a corporate sponsor, that sponsor’s logo would replace the teapot in the upper left corner.
Please help me help them by voting in this poll and/or suggesting your own name for the new state:
You can also help by suggesting an official South California state bird, state tree, or state flower.
Unlikely Explanations 
West Arizona has a nifty ring to it. But what do I know?
And how dare your county ban plastic shopping bags! Those should have their own amendment, like “the right the bear arms”. Or something. I mean, first they take away the plastic bags, what are they going to do next? Take away the rights to my gas-guzzling SUV?
They already took away my right to drive my Prius on the carpool lanes — which also effectively takes away my right to complain that there are no carpool lanes between my home and my office.
I think I did read in a William Gibson, or another post-modern cyber punk, novel about NoCal and SoCal as split political entities. However, his novel hinted that a “big one” had split a physical divide somewhere central California.
I’d call it NorCal, because NoCal sounds like a diet soda, which would really be more of a SoCal thing. This is why I never write cyberpunk.
I think you have to go Dry California because of the lack of water thing and because these American Taliban are bound to bring back prohibition eventually.
Oh and you people have a lot of nerve banning plastic bags. That is telling people what they can’t do. You’re only allowed to tell people what they can’t do in their bedrooms.
Hey! You can’t tell me what I can’t tell people they can’t do.
Why not call it North Mexico? Surely that wouldn’t be confused with any other. . . oh.
What about Lower California, or Lo-Cal for short. Everyone would want to live there because it’d be very slimming.
I’m pretty sure North Mexico would be pretty unpopular among secessionists — although maybe they’d go for it if it were abbreviated to No Mexico.
Cali-reform-ia?
Oh I wish I’d voted for that instead of Texas Lite
I keep mentally pronouncing it “calorie formula”.
i like Ll!
I wonder why do so few people like Fifty-One (pronounced LI)? Definitely my favourite.
Apparently my argument that it would be the first hyphenated state name wasn’t that convincing.
And where is that 51st star going to go?! This all sounds very complicated.
:)
They should start using the red stripes as an overflow area.
How about California Part II?
“California II: Revenge of the Governator”
Of course, once they start making sequels, they’ll probably keep doing it until the Californias outnumber all the other states.
San Bernardino county could just step it up and annex the rest of the counties in the green area. Then we could rename the state “The Inland Empire”, because there hasn’t been an empire in a while.
Their state motto could be “The Inland Empire. Literally.”
— Laura