Parish
Informant: Libby Flint, age 59, New Orleans resident of 36 years, originally from Upstate New York and Vermont. Collected May 22, 2016 and recorded on iphone.
Verbal Lore: Folk speach, slang- associated Customary, ritual, tradition, other
English
United States of America/(Medieval European nations)
context: In Louisiana the term parish is used to denote a small geographical region for administrative purposes. It is synonomous with the word ‘county’, which is used in the other 49 states.
Transcript:
“ Parish is the Louisiana term for County”
Informant info: (Left to Right) Sadhana Puri, age 20, Jessica Link, age 20, Alex Ledoux, age 21 all from New Orleans, LA
Transcript:
“Jessica: A parish like as opposed to a county.
Sadhana: I feel that’s important yeah.
Katelyn: Yeah that’s different.
Jessica: A parish is a county that’s literally it.
Sadhana: That’s a religious influence.
Katelyn: Is there any reason it’s called a parish?
Jessica: What?
Katelyn: Like why is it called a parish instead of a county?
Jessica: I think because of, my guess is because of it used to be like um, because of religion. Like Catholic parishes.
Alex: Because Louisiana was-
Jessica: I think it was French
Sadhana: Catholic influence from the French and Spaish. French probably, yeah.
Jessica: They called their, the word was parish in French. And they just kept that because yeah.
Sadhana: Parish (said with a a sort of French accent.)”
Commentary: The term Parish was originally used to denote the geographical and administrative regions surrounding a specific christian or catholic church. In New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, the French and later the Spanish enforced catholicism and used the catholic demarcations of parish for the geographical regions, as opposed to using the English term county. After 1803 and the Louisiana purchase the term country was adopted in the majority of the Louisiana territory, but the city of New Orleans and the newly established state of Louisiana decidec to keep using Parish instead of county. The term is folk speech and slang that has been reinforced by beurocratic policies and rulings, but it is entirely unique to the state of Louisiana.
Keywords: New Orleans, parish, county