American imperialists not only wrested Puerto Ricans’ political autonomy and economic independence from them, but also changed the island’s name. In perhaps the most bizarre dispute over the island’s future and its relationship to the U.S., American politicians, officials, editors, and readers engaged in a protracted debate over the proper spelling of Puerto Rico. An article in The Washington Post, for example, bemoaned the inconsistent usage of “Puerto Rico” and “Porto Rico” in official documents. The Board on Geographic Names, attempting to resolve the dispute, “requested from President McKinley an expression of his views, and in making the decision he says the name should be Puerto Rico.” The Post neglected to mention on what basis McKinley might decide the name of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, though it was doubtless his authority as president of a conquering nation that justified his declaration. From this perspective, Americans, not Puerto Ricans, were qualified to make even the most basic decisions about the island.
Defenders of the “Porto Rico” spelling tended to focus their arguments on English, rather than Spanish, as the ultimate authority for determining the island’s name. B.C. Gallup, for instance, incorrectly defended the use of “Porto Rico” in a Washington Post article as an older form of Spanish and “the name originally given the island by the Spaniards.” More significantly, however, he claimed that the correct English spelling is Porto Rico and that the official spelling should be in English. For Gallup, “Porto Rico and Portoricans [were] simpler and better- sounding names than Puerto Rico and Puertoriquenos.”
Similar logic inspired a Los Angeles Times article claiming that since “Porto Rico… had become a possession of the United States it was not proper to drop the American orthography and adopt the Spanish.” Here, the superiority of English spelling and pronunciation seemed to be of paramount importance. It was, in this sense, incumbent on “Puerto Ricans” as colonial subjects to become “Porto Ricans” and adopt the implicitly superior Anglo-Saxon diction over what Gallup wrongly claimed were inferior and adulterated forms of Spanish. According to the eventually-victorious “Porto Rico” advocates, U.S. possession of the island demonstrated American superiority and implied a right to remake Puerto Rico in its image. As with Segur’s “rich fruit” fantasies, “Puerto Ricans” were the primary obstacles to “Porto Rico’s” rewards for Americans.