For anyone wondering why Rockstar went with Leonida for the state of Florida...

Since it seems like not everyone is entirely familiar with the name or even the origin, I figured I would post a bit about it.

San Andreas is named after the fault line and I think most people know that by now but what about Leonida? It turns out that they actually didn't just pull this name out of thin air either. It is named after the Spaniard that first discovered Florida. The man's name is Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa. He declared the name of the lands be called "Florida" because the day fell on Easter Sunday and the Pascua Florida which is the flowery festival celebrated on the same day.

Rockstar did the inverse by combining the man's name with the end of Florida, the "ida" being added to Leon.

You can read about Florida's history here if you want. Pretty cool, right?

I did not know this. I just assumed they made the name up on the fly. That is pretty interesting stuff ngl.

I wonder if they will tie Florida's history into the game as well.

I heard about it being tied to Florida's actual IRL history but never looked into it further. That is pretty neat! This is one of the reasons I always enjoyed anime and Japanese video games cause they put such depth and history into their creative worlds and words.

I knew about this cause someone talked about it in a video I watched sometime last year. Pretty cool details. I wish more games put this much effort in to their lore! lol

I did not know about this. I am honestly impressed. Like Genius mentioned, I am used this level of thought into fantasy worlds coming from Japanese devs not American ones.