I'm a victim of the public school system, damn it!) Here's what the textbook says: 'Although the terms 'state' and 'commonwealth' are interchangeable in this country. (If they'd had publications with titles like these when I was a kid, I would have known. But why did the word commonwealth stick? I went through about a half-dozen state histories searching for the root of the word 'commonwealth' in vain.Įventually, motivated by lingering resentment over childhood injustices, I turned to an old textbook at the Carnegie Library: the Harrisburg-produced 1940 book Pennsylvania: The Story of a Commonwealth. That means we were a commonwealth before we were part of the United States, and indeed before there was even a United States to be part of. Pennsylvania was designated as a commonwealth as early as 1776, when it formed its own state - I mean commonwealth - constitution. There's a state seal, and it reads 'state of Pennsylvania.' The distinction seems to be that 'commonwealth' refers to the land and citizens in general, while the word 'state' is typically used to denote the government entity that presides over them.īut apparently, no one except grade-school teachers - that is to say, embittered grade-school teachers whose lives have shrunk to the point where they must insist on meaningless distinctions like 'state' and 'commonwealth' - cares about such things. And guess who presides over it? An official called the Secretary of the Commonwealth. In fact, even our own state - er, commonwealth - has a hard time remembering the difference.įor starters, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a Department of State. Many Pennsylvanians probably don't even know that, formally speaking, they live in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I was one of those kids, if you must know, and to be honest the scars still haven't healed. The only reason for the distinction as far as I can see is for smug teachers to trip up hapless grade-school kids in civics class. For all intents and purposes, there's no difference between states that are just states and those that are commonwealths.

What states are commonwealth states