1. Dieuetmondroit – Monarch of United Kingdom
Diet et mondroit is the motto of Monarch of United Kingdom, meaning God and my right. The motto is said to have first been used by Richard I as a battle cry and presumed to be a reference to the divine right of the Monarch to govern. It was adopted as the royal motto of England by King Henry Vwith the phrase “and my right” referring to his claim to the French crown.
2. Equal Rights- Wyoming
In 1869 the Wyoming Territorial Legislature approved a measure granting women the right to vote, serve on juries and hold public office.Wyoming’s small population and frontier pragmatism made its pioneering early push for equal rights possible.
3. Eureka- California
The story of king’s quandary and a fortuitous bath gives California its state motto, which is the only one in the United States that comes from Greek. One of California’s first U.S. military governors included the phrase when he designed California’s seal in 1849. It stems from Archimedes story of measuring the Gold crown.
4. Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine- Maryland
An archaic Italian phrase whose translation, “Manly Deeds, Womanly Words,” is something of head-scratcher. Its link to the state is that it was the motto of the Calvert family, the English Catholic barons who founded the Maryland colony in 1632.
5. Hope- Rhode Island
Rhode Island was the first American colony to guarantee freedom of conscience and an early version of separation of church and state. Its first official seal, which later would become the state’s, featured an anchor and the motto “Hope”— a Biblical reference to Hebrews 6:18-19, which describes early Christians as “we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us … as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
6. Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable- North Dakota
North Dakota’s motto quotes verbatim from an 1830 Senate debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina.
7. Sic Semper Tyrannis- Virginia
The official motto of Virginia links two of history’s most famous political assassinations: the stabbing of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44 B.C. and the shooting of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. “Sic semper tyrannis”—“thus always to tyrants!” is the phrase attributed to Marcus Junius Brutus. A bare-chested, female Virtue stands over a toppled and de-crowned Tyranny.
8. Ua Mau keEa o ka ‘Āiena i kaPono- Hawaii
Kamehameha III’s words during the ceremony, which became the state’s motto, are generally translated as meaning “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness,” though the word “pono” can also mean goodness, excellence, order, completeness, care, purpose or hope.
By: Archa Dave
