home

Puerto Rico ")

The language they talk in Puerto Rico is english and spainsh.

T he official name of Puerto Rico Is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was founded in 1952. It had been a colony of the United States since 1898, and a Spanish colony before that. Christopher Columbus named the island when it was first colonized in 1493.



On November 19, Christopher Columbus discovered the island in the New World. He found the island populated by as many as 50,000 Taíno or Arawak Indians. The Taíno Indians who greeted Columbus made a big mistake when they showed him gold nuggets in the river and told him to take all he wanted. Originally the newcomers called the island San Juan Bautista, for St. John the Baptist and the town Puerto Rico because of its obvious excellent potentialities. It was not until later that the two names were switched. Thanks in part to the enthusiasm of ambitious Juan Ponce de León, a lieutenant to Columbus, the city of Puerto Rico ("rich port") quickly became Spain's most important military outpost in the Caribbean.