The story
- Middle English · inherited fromcomun wele
- English todaycommonweal
From Middle English comun wele, commen wele, comune wele, equivalent to common (“public”) + weal (“well-being”). By the 1520s used by some authors as the equivalent of res publica (republic), alongside commonwealth from about the same time.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.