New New York.
I’m coming down solidly on District of Columbia. The only change is in it’s status. Nothing will stop them from changing the name in the future if they can get a majority of the state’s voters to go along with it. That’s one of the things a state can do.
Why not Area 51? It would be the 51st state. That it would share a name with that other infamous Area 51 would be a bonus. 
Freedonia is still my first choice, for obvious reasons.
Just don’t say it’s part of the DMV.
Would its state capitol become The Halls Of Montezuma? 
East Dakota.
Truthfully, “the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” seems a little over-complicated to me as the name of a state, but if that’s what the people who live there have decided on, I see no serious reason why the rest of us should particularly object to that name.
This is all eminently logical, in my view. If a commonwealth is equivalent to a “state,” then why shouldn’t a district also be equivalent to a “state”?
But there will be loud cries against “Columbia” even though the Italian guy arousing such objections was born with the name “Columbo”. DC residents could simply decide that Columbia refers to something other than the fifteenth-century explorer. Not a record club, probably, but how about:
A supercontinent! Very grand. And symbolic of the way that things that are separate are sometimes, instead, together.
Since the discussion of whether DC is already represented was clearly going to completely overtake this topic, I moved all the posts about it to the existing topic on whether DC should become a state.
If some GD or P&E mod thinks they deserve their own topic, and don’t belong there, please move them again.
Pandemica
There’s already a Commonwealth of Kentucky, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Virginia and Commonwealth of Rhode Island etc. etc., and they’re still states, so hey, why not?
Yes, well Massachusetts is a Commonwealth. Rhode Island is a recently named state.