The Times-Picayune story is terrific! Thanks, Mossy.
Louisiana is always fucked up in a more interesting and nuanced way than the rest of the south.
Louisiana Catholicism is always fucked up in a more interesting and nuanced way than the rest of the south world.
Maryland is Catholic, southern, and mostly boring.
Say what you will, but I was not fucking boring.
Maryland basically only ever had a small Catholic minority, despite the charter.
I guess that's why they never had a pope.
Maryland was named after Henrietta Maria (who was also a Catholic), not Bloody Mary - 6 should come from Opinionated Charles I.
Actually it was named after the Virgin Mary and the Henrietta Maria thing made for a good cover story so the Catholics could get away with it.
Officially it looks like Charles I substituted Maryland for Lord Baltimore's name proposal? But even taking as given that Charles I was not crypto-Catholic, just sympathized with them more than the polity as a whole wanted, it does seem like that whole interlude might have been a ploy for Charles to make the name seem like his own idea to please his wife, to keep anyone from saying Lord Baltimore was giving aid and comfort to Catholics, even when the intent was to throw them a bone.
That made me wonder, when Lord Baltimore converted to Catholicism, whether he had to give up his seat in the House of Lords. But it looks like he was an Irish lord who couldn't be there in any case.
America has no states named after women who weren't virgins and two after women who were. Australia is the opposite.
Australia has two states named after the same non-virgin woman, correct?
Suzanne Western, later the first Countess of Territory.
I guess I should count West Virginia separately. So three American states.
Tess Mania, an excitable girl they all said.
Also Louisiana and Florida, two states named after non-virginal 1970's sassy African-American sitcom mamas.
AIMHMHB the girl's name "Brittany" became popular in the US after the return of lots of Third Army soldiers who'd had a great time liberating it in 1944 (which also explains why you don't meet many girls called "Normandy").