Oh, I did not know that! I thought her real full name is Maria Louise Veronica Ciccone. I may be wrong, though. Ok then, as I said people give to their children the most strange names . That's interesting, however, since I always thought, and I guess most people here in Italy, she deliberately chose that as her art name to impress the audience, to shock. I'll ask around to see whether ppl know about that, here :)
Just a thought... "Maria" is "Mary", that is the Holy Vrigin's first name. Now, maybe there's confusion about her first name being Maria and Madonna? Well, again, I don't know.

However, don't misunderstand me, I am not saying she did something wrong in using that as a "art" name, and I also think she's a very good artist, but I was just observing, once more, how the perceprion of what is acceptable and what is not changes... When Madonna became popular many people considered her very offensive to the religious sentiment of the catholics, which is much worse than just being considered a too sexy and allusive, at least here in Italy where you see nudity on the front cover of most magazines and on huge advertisements on the streets, every day! And now nobody cares, most people just like Madonna and I am quite confident that if a new singer named "God" came up, people would not care that much anymore. At this point I would not be surprised if somewhere in the world somebody called his son "God" Big expectations as a parent, I would say