Is Cheech and Chong’s comedy skit and single release “Sister Mary Elephant” a play on anything?
I mean they could’ve picked any name, so why did they choose “Elephant”? Was it a play on another famous sister with a name like the word elephant or what?
I think it’s just a play on “Sister Mary Ellen”, a typical name for a nun.
A lot of nuns used to be Sister Mary Secondname. In some cases the second name was fairly normal like Ellen or Ruth or Margaret. But occasionally you’d see a name like Sister Mary Medved or Sister Mary Ignatius or Sister Mary Scullion (all genuine).
Well, to any non-Catholic or any Catholic younger than 45, the joke makes little sense. But until the mid-Sixties, if a young lady entered a convent, she had to change her name. Usually, her new name would be a tribute to the Virgin Mary or to some other female saint.
The Virgin Mary had countless alternate names (“Our Lady of This,” “Our Lady of That,” “Our Lady of the Other Thing”), and nuns’ names often reflected one of those various names for Mary.
If young Patricia Murphy became a nun, she might change her name to Sister Mary Immaculata, Sister Mary Dolorum (Mary Our Lady of Sorrows), Sister Mary Perpetua, Sister Mary Carmelita (a tribute to Our Lady of Mount Carmel), and so on.
Cheech Marin went to Catholic schools in East L.A. as a kid, and had countless nuns named Sister Mary Somethingorother. Sister Mary Elephant was just a silly variation he made up.
Wow. I just realized I can’t remember very many nun names from when I was a kid maybe my subconscious has blocked them but yes, they were always usually Sister Mary Something. The something wasn’t always a female name though and it often led to naughty kids changing the name to something else like Sister Mary Elephant, never in earshot of said nun though unless you liked the ruler.
Thank you for this. I am sending the link to my brother and sisters post haste!
I also had a Sister John Michael and a Sister Emmanuel.
I had a Sister Mary Peter in 7th grade. One time someone made the “mistake” of calling her Sister Mary Elephant. Luckily she was young and cool enough to mostly let it slide - IIRC she was trying to control her laughter while disciplining the miscreant, so she had probably heard the C&C skit.
I also had a Sister Mary Romuald in 4th or 5th grade. Calling her “Sister Mary Romulan” was a Very Bad Idea. Head slam into cinderblock wall bad.
I’d always assumed it referred to the Christoper Durang play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, but looking at the linked article, the dates probably don’t work for that. IIRC, C&C’s work was mostly in the mid-late 70s.
It does kind of scan with Sister Mary Benedict, Ingrid Bergman’s character from the old Bing Crosby movie The Bells of St. Mary’s.
We had a Sister Mary Coke Bottles. She has super thick glasses. The funny thing is, I can’t remember her actual nun name anymore.
Rita Moreno played Sister Peter Marie on the TV show “Oz”. Her character was usually referred to as “Sister Pete”.
Cheech and Chong made the “Sister Mary Elephant” single LONG before Christopher Durang wrote that play.
But Cheech and Durang were coming from the same place, sort of. They were both making fun of the kinds of nuns they’d encountered in Catholic schools.
The main difference is that Cheech seemed to regard his old nuns with a mixture of affection AND amusement, while Durang regarded Sister Mary Ignatius (and religion itself) as the embodiment of evil.
So was referring to Sister Mary Arthur as “Sister MacArthur”.
Owie.
The closest real life religious name that I’ve heard is Sister Mary Idelphonse.
There’s also the matter that many nuns, especially the ones assigned to unruly elementary school classes, were surprisingly large and strong (especially when wielding a ruler).
In Pedro Almodovar’s Entre Tinieblas, theres’s a Soror Estiérco. (“Sister Manure.”)
I always wondered if she was related. 
My friend named her daughter “Mariella” and had the gall to not laugh when I called her Mary Elephant. Rude.
Back in the late 70’s or early 80’s, a radio station in Baltimore had a lively serial about “Sister Neutrino, the nuclear nun”.
Maybe he met a Sister Mary Oliphant at some point? Don’t know if that’s an actual nun name, but hey…