Commonwealth

:Alternative meanings: the Commonwealth of Nations or Commonwealth of Independent States

Subnational

United States

• States - Four states in the United States officially designate themselves "commonwealths": Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In these cases, this is merely a name and has no constitutional impact. They thus emphasize that they have a "government based on the common consent of the people", instead of a government legitimized through their earlier Royal Colony status that was derived from the King of England. This transition occurred in 1776, when the need arose to express a change in their legal status consistent with the Revolutionary War. Kentucky was a county of Virginia at this time, but chose to retain the Commonwealth descriptor when it became a separate state. While the term "commonwealth" has the same legal and economic meaning as "state," the four regions that chose to designate themselves commonwealths probably did so as a reference to the earlier Commonwealth period in England which ended in 1660, when that nation was not ruled by a king. http://www.virginia.org/site/features.asp?FeatureID=99 http://www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/KYCommonwealth.htm
• Insular Territories - "Commonwealth" is also used in the U.S. to describe the political relationship between the United States and the overseas unincorporated territories of Puerto Rico and of the Northern Marianas (see: commonwealth (U.S. insular area)).