MDMaryland State Symbols

Maryland's most recognizable symbol is its flag, and it is the only state flag in the country taken directly from English heraldry. The black and gold checks and the red and white cross come from the coat of arms of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, whose son founded the colony in 1634. Nearly every other Maryland symbol traces back to those same two color schemes: the state bird is the Baltimore oriole, named for the Calvert colors on its plumage, and the state cat is the calico, chosen because it wears black, orange and white.

Official state symbols

What is on the Maryland state flag

The Maryland flag is divided into four quarters. The first and fourth quarters carry the Calvert arms: six vertical and six diagonal bands in black and gold, counterchanged so the colors reverse across the diagonal. The second and third quarters carry the Crossland arms: a quartered field of red and white bearing a cross bottony, a cross whose four arms end in three rounded lobes. Crossland was the family of Alicia Crossland, George Calvert's mother, and combining the two coats of arms marks his maternal line alongside his paternal one.

The two halves were once political enemies. During the Civil War, Marylanders loyal to the Union used the yellow and black Calvert colors, while Maryland regiments fighting for the Confederacy adopted the red and white Crossland cross bottony as their badge. When the full quartered banner was made the official state flag in 1904, it deliberately put both sides back into one design. The staff is topped by a gold cross bottony finial, required by law since 1945.

The seal, the motto and the Old Line nickname

Maryland uses the reverse of its Great Seal as the state emblem. The design in use today was adopted in 1876 and shows the Calvert shield on an ermine mantle, supported by a plowman with a spade and a fisherman with a fish, standing for the two halves of the colonial economy. An earl's coronet sits above. The surrounding band carries a Latin line from Psalm 5, Scuto bonae voluntatis tuae coronasti nos, "with favor wilt thou compass us as with a shield," while the Italian Calvert family motto sits on a scroll below.

That Italian motto, Fatti maschii, parole femine, is the one that generates arguments. It is traditionally rendered "manly deeds, womanly words," and the state has for years published the softer translation "strong deeds, gentle words." The nickname Old Line State is easier: it honors the Maryland Line, the regiments of the Continental Army whose rearguard stand at the Battle of Long Island in 1776 covered Washington's retreat.

Symbols that surprise people

• Jousting is the official state sport. Maryland adopted it in 1962, becoming the first state in the country to name an official sport at all. Lacrosse was added separately as the state team sport in 2004.
• Walking is the official state exercise. Designated in 2008, it is one of the few state symbols anywhere that is an activity rather than a plant, animal or object.
• The state fossil shell has a scientific first. Ecphora gardnerae gardnerae, a snail from the Calvert Cliffs, was among the earliest North American fossils ever illustrated in a European scientific work, and it became the state fossil shell in 1994.
• The state song was repealed. "Maryland, My Maryland" served as the state song from 1939 until 2021, when the General Assembly voted to strike it from the code over lyrics written in 1861 urging Maryland to secede.
• The Wye Oak was the state tree in person. Maryland named the white oak its state tree in 1941, and the honored specimen was a single giant on the Eastern Shore in Talbot County, more than 450 years old, which fell in a thunderstorm in 2002.

Neighboring states and more Maryland pages