Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

local trivia

This weekend’s Washington Post Sunday Source included an interesting explainer of why Virginia is a “commonwealth” rather than a “state.” (“Decoding MD+VA+DC” - 02/01/04)

Virginia’s founders reached back to the time of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell, he of the pudding bowl haircut, led a revolution against Britain’s Charles I and took the “king” out of United Kingdom. He called his royalty-free nation a commonwealth, a word that comes from the “common weal,” or common good.

Cromwell’s commonwealth lasted from 1653 to 1659. In the end, it was as corrupt and dangerous as any monarchy, but prominent Virginians saw the term as a nice “up yours” to the British crown.

Commonwealth “was a word to them that meant a lot,” said Brent Tarter, editor of the Library of Virginia’s “Dictionary of Virginia Biography.” “It harkened back to that period in British history when there was no royalty.”

For some reason, this reminds me of another explainer that Rob pointed out to me a while back. Urban legend has it that DC has no J Street (but it does have I and K streets, and the rest of the alphabet) because city planner Pierre L’Enfant didn’t like Supreme Court justice John Jay. As debunked, the real reason may be a bit more mundane:

The most plausible explanation is that J Street was omitted because the letters I and J were often indistinguishable from each other (especially when handwritten), and in 18th century English they were still largely interchangeable. (The 1740 “New General English Dictionary” published in London had a single section for I and J, and the standard identification Thomas Jefferson used on his personal possessions was “T.I.”) Having both an “I” and a “J” street would have been redundant at best and confusing at worst, so “J” ended up as the odd man out.