The people have always loved to symbolize their beliefs, their illusions, their desires, or their amusements in an allegory embodied in a woman. Before the Revolution, in the numerous processions, we saw very young girls following the cross dressed in long white dresses, their hair loose over their shoulders; these were the Mary Magdalenes.
During the Revolution, a new cult was attempted, and these were beautiful women, usually chosen from among the most virtuous; they were carried, wearing Phrygian caps, on floats surrounded by flowers and laurels. In the nineteenth century, during the Carnival celebrations, people were content with wash-house queens, who paraded the boulevards draped in theatrical finery. In recent times, they have invented the queens of the neighborhoods and the queen of queens. This was not enough. Then they invented the "Marianne," the name under which! For an unknown period of time, the Republic was referred to in popular circles.
So much for Marianne.
But who gave the Republic this nickname? To tell the truth, we don't know exactly.
Mr. Joignaux, in his Gazette du village, assures us that the word was first used in its popular sense in 1850, to designate a large republican society organized secretly to respond with an uprising to the planned coup d'état. Members were asked: "Do you know Marianne?" This was the password. The Larousse dictionary accepted this explanation. But the word is much older in the meaning we give it. Already in 1830, a song was sung, attributed to Altaroche, in which this refrain appears.

They grovel before a king!

So we have to go back further. It has been said that, during the festivals of 1793 and 1794, the pretty girl who usually symbolized the Republic was a Parisian woman named Mafianne Lecoq, who quickly became popular; the public, mispronouncing her name, nicknamed this citizen "Marianne." The name apparently stuck with the Republic. For better or for worse, this is one explanation; it doesn't satisfy us; there must be another, but which one?

JEAN-BERNARD.