A 1732 map of delineating the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania and showing the Chesapeake Bay. The map was annexed to an agreement between Charles Calvert, the fifth Lord Baltimore, and the Penn family. The map did not accurately reflect Maryland’s territorial claims and Calvert reneged on the agreement. The dispute was finally resolved in 1750 in favor of Pennsylvania, and the Mason-Dixon line, subsequently set as the boundary between the colonies, largely accords with this map.
28 April 2021
The state of Maryland is named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, who granted the colony’s charter to Cecilius Calvert, the second Baron Baltimore in 1632. Calvert originally suggested the name Crescentia (Land of Growth), but the king suggested Mariana in honor of his wife. Calvert replied that the Jesuit priest Juan de Mariana had written tracts critical of monarchy and providing a justification for tyrannicide (a critique that would turn out to be on point given Charles’s fate in 1649), so Charles ordered the name be styled Terra Mariae in the charter, which was Anglicized to Maryland. The relevant passage in the 1632 charter, which is in Latin, gives both the Latin and English names:
SCIATIS quod NOS de ampliori gratiâ nostrâ certâ scientiâ et mero motu nostris dictam regionem ac insulas in provinciam erigendas esse duximus prout eas ex plenitudine potestatis et prærogativæ nostræ regiæ pro nobis hæredibus et successoribus nostris in provinciam erigimus et incorporamus eamque Terram Mariæ Anglicè MARYLAND nominamus et sic in futuro nominari volumus.
(KNOW YOU, that WE, of our more ample grace, certain knowledge, and pure motive, have ordered that the said region and islands be constituted as a province, as out of the fullness of our royal power and prerogative, we do, for us, our heirs, and our successors, constitute and incorporate the same into a province, and name it Terram Mariæ, in English MARYLAND, and we wish it to be called thus henceforth.)
It is often claimed that the name is a reference to the Virgin Mary because the colony was intended to be haven for Roman Catholics and other non-Anglicans, although this did not always work out so well in practice. While some may have understood the name to have religious significance, that was not the intent of either Charles or Calvert in so naming it.
The indigenous population of what is now Maryland was largely Algonquin, of which there are many tribes and dialects, but also included Iroquois and Siouan bands. As such, there is no single native name for the region the state now encompasses. But the geographic feature that dominates the state is the Chesapeake Bay, and that name comes from the Algonquian Chesepiook (meaning something like Great Water). The claim that it is from the Delaware kitshishwapeak (Great Salty Bay) has been largely discounted by linguists.
Here is an early use of the name from 1606, in the form Chesupioc, published in the collection of travel narratives known as Purchas His Pilgrimes:
The six and twentieth day of Aprill, about foure a clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of Virginia: the same day wee entred into the Bay of Chesupioc directly, without any let or hinderance; there wee landed and discouered a little way, but wee could find nothing worth the speaking of, but faire meddowes and goodly tall Trees, with such Fresh-waters running through the woods, as I was almost rauished at the first sight thereof.
Sources:
Andrews, Matthew Page. History of Maryland: Province and State. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1929, 11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
“The Charter of the Province of Maryland” (20 June 1632). The Laws of Maryland, vol. 1 of 2, William Kilty, ed. Annapolis: Frederick Green, 1799. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. Maryland, n.
Purchas, Samuel. Purchas His Pilgrimes, the fourth part. London: William Stansby, 1625, 1686. Early English Books Online.
Image credit: Unknown cartographer, 1632. University of Pittsburgh. Public domain image.