By 1599 Spanish speakers distinguished moro from morisco by baptism and origin.

Evidence

By the end of the sixteenth century, it even became possible to make a semantic distinction between moro and morisco (2), and to say, for example, “These Moriscos are just as much Moors (Muslims) as the people in Algiers” (Estos moriscos son tan moros como los de Argel). In 1599, Lope de Vega could use this same distinction in his play, Los cautivos de Argel, and expect his audience to grasp the point immediately. One of his characters speaks of changing “from being a Moor to being a Morisco” (“desde ser moro a morisco”; Case 1993, 121). Lope presents the man in question as having been brought up in Spain under the name of Francisco, having subsequently crossed to North Africa, where he adopted a Moorish name, “Fuquer,” but in the play he contemplates moving back again to Spain. Clearly by Lope’s time morisco (2) was semantically firmly established. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 56

Categorization

• SHARE: A Lope de Vega specialist or Spanish Golden Age theater buff would love the detail that a 1599 play could hinge on ‘from being a Moor to being a Morisco’ as instantly graspable — the distinction between faith and origin.
• SEED: Angle: how a legal/ethnic label inverts — the man Lope depicts moves back and forth across the med line changing names, showing ‘Moor’ and ‘Morisco’ as reversible identity positions rather than fixed categories.