Morlachs ( or , ; ; ) has been an exonym used for a rural Christian community in Herzegovina, Lika and the Dalmatian Hinterland. The term was initially used for a bilingual Vlach pastoralist community in the mountains of Croatia in the second half of the 14th until the early 16th century. Then, when the community straddled the Venetian–Ottoman border until in the 17th century, it only referred to Slavic-speaking, mainly Eastern Orthodox but also Roman Catholic people. The Vlach i.e. Morlach population of Herzegovina and Dalmatian hinterland from the Venetian and Turkish side were of either Roman Catholic or Christian Orthodox faith. Venetian sources from 17th and 18th century make no distinction between Orthodox and Catholics, they refer to both groupings as Morlachs. The exonym ceased to be used in an ethnic sense by the end of the 18th century, and came to be viewed as derogatory, but has been renewed as a social or cultural anthropological subject. As the nation-building of the 19th century proceeded, the Vlach/Morlach population residing with the Croats and Serbs of the Dalmatian Hinterland espoused either a Serb or Croat ethnic identity, but preserved some common sociocultural outlines. Etymology 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. Dimitrie Cantemir, in his History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire remarks that when Moldavia was subdued to the Ottoman Rule by Bogdan III, Moldavia was referred to by the Ottomans as "Ak iflac", or Ak Vlach (i.e., White Wallachians), while the Wallachians were known as "Kara iflac", or Kara Vlach, (i.e., Black Wallachians). "Black Vlachs" can in fact mean "Northern Vlachs", because the Turkish word "kara" means black but also means North in old Turkish. There are several interpretations of the ethnonym and phrase "moro/mavro/mauro vlasi". The direct translation of the name Morovlasi in Serbo-Croatian would mean Black Vlachs. It was considered that "black" referred to their clothes of brown cloth. The 17th-century Venetian Dalmatian