Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 September 10

= September 10 =

Position of the District of Columbia in an alphabetized list of U.S. states
I have noticed that in the relevant menu in web forms that include fields for an address in the U.S., the District of Columbia is shown after Delaware and before Florida. It seems to me that it should be listed after Colorado and before Connecticut, especially since the four states that officially call themselves "Commonwealth of..." rather than "State of..." aren't listed ahead of the other states. So how was this decided? I looked at List of states and territories of the United States and U.S. state and didn't find an answer. Thanks in advance. -⁠-⁠Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 18:15, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe because nobody says "Commonwealth of Massachusetts", they just say "Massachusetts". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:18, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bugs. Also, no one says just Columbia - always District of Columbia or D.C. for short. --Xuxl (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * A story I heard somewhere is that, when names were being considered for what was to become the state of Washington, one of the candidates was "Columbia", but it was rejected &mdash; out of concern that it would be confused with the District of Columbia. Would be interested to know whether there's any truth in it. --Trovatore (talk) 19:34, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That sounds familiar, and it's also what Washington (state) says. Note that it would have been a logical counterpart to British Columbia. The whole thing could have been called Columbia (for the river), but it had already been labeled the Oregon Country. The river, in turn, had been named for a ship called the Columbia, whose name came from the same source as the District, namely Columbia (name) - which of course all originates from Christopher. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:48, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Many lists place D.C. at the end, after Wyoming.  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 22:48, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Under what definition does the District of Columbia count as a state? 194.174.73.80 (talk) 12:24, 13 September 2018 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin
 * It's not. But it's analogous to a state, for convenience, along with US territories which also have two-letter postal designations. See List of U.S. state abbreviations. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:21, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It depends on the situation. I'm fairly sure residents of DC don't consider themselves analogous to a state when elections come up and they find themselves without any vote for Senators and only voting on a house delegate who can't vote on bills, and where that same Congress can change their laws in any way they want for any reason. In some ways even worse for territories of course, who don't even get to vote on who gets to throw paper towels at them although Congress tends to have less say on their laws [//constitutioncenter.org/blog/constitution-check-is-puerto-rico-just-a-colony-under-congresss-control]. Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does. In terms of representation, it's not the same as a state. But it has a "state" postal code and zip codes within it, so from the viewpoint of the postal service, it's kind of analogous. As far as the citizens having no voice in Congress, there's no anchor keeping them there in DC. Nearby states await. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Many people do not have the economic or social means to uproot themselves and their families to "just move". There is an anchor holding them in DC, and it is "everyone I know is here, and I have no money or waiting job to make it possible for me to leave".  And those people, who cannot move, also have rights as U.S. citizens.  It isn't just people who are rich enough to move around that do. -- Jayron 32 11:16, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * They may not be in good position to leave as a practical matter, but there's no law keeping them there, in general. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:09, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * True, but functioning democracies do what is right, not merely what is legal (or more to the point have laws that are right and just), and saying "you're legally allowed to leave, so I'm not going to allow you to vote" is not exactly right. -- Jayron 32 18:22, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
 * No doubt. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:36, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Puerto Rico does vote in the presidential primaries and Trump did not do well there. Rmhermen (talk) 20:55, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That explains a few things. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Dyspeptic skeptic, the key here is Xuxl's comment: "DC" or "the District" or "the District of Columbia" are the normal ways we Americans refer to it when we don't feel like using the word "Washington", so if you don't want alphabetize it as "Washington" and you don't want to give it a non-alphabetical place (e.g. Michael J's comment about putting it after Wyoming), putting it between Delaware and Florida (or between CT and DE if you go by postal abbreviation) is the only route that makes sense with common usage. Aside from formal legal use and anti-ambiguity use, "State of X" is very rare, and "Commonwealth of X" occasionally appears to highlight the officially non-state status of those four, but "State/Commonwealth of X" never appears when the context is merely a bunch of states, and if we alphabetized all of them that way, we'd end up with a not-very-useful list of fifty-one entities in which four begin with C, one begins with D, and forty-six begin with S. Nyttend (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)