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.
Comparison of Portuguese and Spanish criteria has been carried out, it has been suggested that words of French origin in Portuguese are significantly more numerous than those in Spanish. Here are some examples: Spanish kept much of the Mozarabic vocabulary of Arabic origin, while the Mozarabic component was less extensive in Portuguese. Thus we find a number of cases in which the usual Spanish word is derived from Arabic, while the corresponding word in Portuguese is Latin, Greek, Germanic or Celtic-derived, as in the following examples: There are some examples where a word of Arabic origin is used in Portuguese but not in Spanish, such