Why do some states call themselves “Commonwealths” ?

11 comments

1. Virginia is a commonwealth.

   It’s just what is in the state constitution when it was written. According to the Virginia gov website:” When Virginia adopted its first constitution in 1776, the term commonwealth was reintroduced, most likely to emphasize that Virginia’s new government was based upon the sovereignty of the people united for the common good, or common weal.”

2. Apparently using commonwealth is a designation that’s simultaneously a show of the states’ devotion to their residents and a signal that the British crown no longer ruled these colonies; the citizens did.

   Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also sounds cooler than just being a state lol

3. It’s a holdover from colonial days

4. It’s just a holdover from the Colonial era. All four states that use the title are former colonies or part of former colonies and still had English common law influencing their legal structures after independence. They chose the title of Commonwealth.

5. The word commonwealth carried a bit more weight in 1776, and we saw no reason to change it since.

6. It is just historical. There is no legal difference.

7. It’s just for historical significance

8. It’s where we grow our superheroes.

9. Holdover from 1776

10. I’m in VA. I won’t renumerate the reasons already commented on, but will say I have never once heard a person say I’m from the Commonwealth of Virginia. It sounds ridiculous. People ask your state, it’s Virginia. Maybe in NoVA they say it, but they should be their own state anyway with DC lumped in for good measure.

11. Keep in mind too that while Commonwealth has a specific meaning in the context of the UK these days, back then its most recent British usage was during our ‘republican’ period, when the Kingdom of England was renamed the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. Ironically for us that was one of the most religiously and politically repressive parts of our history, but I can see why the term would make sense for a non-monarchical polity a century on in the 1700s looking for what to call itself.

    Australia is incidentally officially called the Commonwealth of Australia as an independent nation (and does legally have an Australian monarch, so there you go).