I think you overestimate the knowledge most people have of California. I've been to Cali a bunch of times and none of the names they picked mean anything to me

I think you overestimate the knowledge most people have of California. I've been to Cali a bunch of times and none of the names they picked mean anything to me except Big Sur, but that's pretty obscure. I wouldn't expect anyone around me to know what or where it is unless they happened to be really big into the tech scene. US tech firms have a long history of using US place names as code names for operating system releases. Windows 95 was Chicago, if I recall correctly.