Other Adams writings indicate that he felt the word commonwealth was the best direct translation of the Latin word republic. It could be a democracy, it could be a monarchy, it could be an aristocracy. Adams would use state and commonwealth interchangeably when talking about Massachusetts, but it seems that when he used the word commonwealth it was for fancier things.Īnother clue is that state is a very general term: A state can have any kind of government. One is that the word commonwealth sounds lofty. Why he used that word has been lost to time, but Sara Martin, the editor in chief of the Adams Family Papers Collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society, had a few possible clues as to why. An earlier draft of the Massachusetts constitution referred to it as the state of Massachusetts Bay.īut when Adams wrote his constitution, he said: We are the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, the name goes back to founding father and Massachusetts resident John Adams, who wrote the Massachusetts constitution, drafted in 1780. Massachusetts is one of four commonwealths in the nation, the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

You’ve heard it in speeches and seen it on government documents: Massachusetts is not a state.

What states are commonwealth states