Creole peoples were a mixture of people of European ancestry and slave populations (or free men and women of color). They were also referred to as "criollos", a word from the Spanish language meaning "created" and used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. Actually, the French word Creole is derived from the Portuguese word "Crioulo", which described Spaniards born in the Americas as opposed to Spain.
Etymology The word "etymology" derives from the Greek word (), itself from (), meaning "true sense", and the suffix "-logia", denoting "the study of". In linguistics, the term "etymon" refers to a word or morpheme (e.g., stem or root) from which a later word derives. For example, the Latin word "candidus", which means "white", is the etymon of English "candid". Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption