ok.. i read that link you posted up... i saw the territory and protectorate info.... but nothing about 46 states and 4 commonwealths

 

Too tired to type my own stuff here is a "Paste" job
Officially the following are commonwealths, not states:
Kentucky

Massachusetts

Pennsylvania

Virginia
In common usage all these are normally referred to as being states.
The Northern Marianas Islands in the Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean are also commonwealths.

Dictionaries and encyclopedias that I have consulted offer two definitions of the word commonwealth:

A state in which the government functions with the common consent of the people. This definition would seem to me to be virtually identical to that of a democracy. One source describes the USA and its individual states as being commonwealths in this sense but with only the states listed above officially designating themselves as such. The term would therefore appear to be merely a description and to have little or no precise meaning.

A fixed but flexible association of states, as in the British Commonwealth and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
linkyhttp://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/states/cwealth.htm