Morlachs

Morlachs (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Morlaci, Cyrillic: Морлаци) was an exonym used for a rural community in Lika and the Dalmatian Hinterland. The term was initially used for a Vlach pastoralist community in the mountains of Croatia and the Republic of Venice in the second half of the 14th until the early 16th century. Later, when the community straddled the Venetian–Ottoman border in the 17th century, it referred to Slavic-speaking, mainly Eastern Orthodox, and to a lesser degree Roman Catholic people. The exonym ceased to be used by the end of the 18th century, and came to be viewed as derogatory. With the nation-building in the 19th century, the population of the Dalmatian hinterlands espoused either a Serb or Croat ethnicity.

The word Morlach is derived from Italian Morlacco and Latin Morlachus or Murlachus, being cognate to Greek Μαυροβλάχοι Maurovlachoi, meaning "Black Vlachs" (from Greek μαύρο mauro meaning "dark", "black"). The Serbo-Croatian term in its singular form is Morlak; its plural form is Morlaci [mor-latsi]. In some 16th-century redactions of the Doclean Chronicle, they are referred to as "Morlachs or Nigri Latini" (Black Latins).Petar Skok suggested it derived from the Latin maurus and Greek maurós ("dark"), the diphthongs au and av indicating a Dalmato-Romanian lexical remnant.

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