Maryland, my homeland (at least for the last three years)

Today we will explore some fascinating facts about Maryland -- a state picked totally at random and having nothing to do with the fact that I live there -- such as its motto, why it is named Maryland instead of, say, Paradise, the state song, average number of insect bites per resident year round, etc. To be unbiased, I will also share some fascinating facts about other states, such as that most of them are much bigger.

First, the motto of Maryland. A state cannot pick just any motto. For instance, mottoes cannot be in English, and they cannot have anything to do with that particular state. Maryland's state motto, for instance, is "fatti maschii, parole femine," which means "manly deeds, womanly words." A looser, more literal translation might be "fat men, parole the women!" which makes at least as much sense.

For utterly no reason at all, I have always had a vague thought that Maryland is perhaps named after someone named Mary, but this just shows my ignorance of the complexities involved in naming states. Maryland is, in fact, named after the Queen of Charles 1 of England, whose name was NOT Mary. Her name was Henrietta Maria, but you can certainly understand why the founding fathers of the state chose Maryland as opposed to Henriettaland. It was probably Marialand originally, but we Marylanders like to make things easier on ourselves whenever possible.

Alas, Maryland is not the only state named after Henrietta Maria. North Dakota is, too, Dakota being Charles's pet name for his wife. Okay, not really, but supposedly Maine is named after this queen. Someone must have just picked random letters in the name Henrietta Maria ("How about Main?" "Hmmm, we need another vowel...I know! Let's put an E on the end so future generations of Americans, who do not know how to spell proper English, will know that this state was named after Merry Olde Englande!").

Maryland is by no means the only state with an interesting history behind its name. Connecticut, for instance, comes from the Native American word "quinnehtukqut," which means "And you thought Connecticut was hard to spell!" Iowa's name -- this is true -- comes "probably from an Indian word meaning beautiful." Having driven across Iowa, I can only say that I am certain the Indians never intended for this word to be applied to Iowa. They probably voted to name Hawaii this, but the Iowans overruled them.

State songs are apparently subject to federal naming guidelines, possibly to avoid potential legal issues such as the following:

Judge: Yes, Nevada, what are you proposing for the title of your state song?

Nevada (all three residents): Your honor, the State of Nevada submits "I love Nevada."

Judge: I'm sorry, that's already been taken by Georgia.

So to avoid confusion, state song titles basically go like this: "(Insert your state name here), my (insert your state name again in case someone didn't get it the first time)." Thus, you have "Maryland, My Maryland," "Michigan, My Michigan, "Florida, My Hot Humid Florida," etc. The exception is Ohio, whose state song is "Beautiful Ohio," which, given what I've seen of that state, certainly seems optimistic. Possibly whoever named it was comparing it to Iowa.

Maryland may be small, but it certainly has its share of interesting things to do. Points of interest are often listed as the U.S. Naval Academy, the National Aquarium, and Virginia. We even have a state dog, the Chesapeake Bay retriever, who is trained to retrieve the state crustacean, the Maryland blue crab. The state sport, jousting (really!), is often needed for getting the state crustacean away from the state dog.

There are, of course, many other interesting things about Maryland, some of which have yet to be discovered. Contrary to popular belief, the state does not collect data on the average number of insect bites per resident each year, so as soon as I finish calculating that, I'll let you know.