Origins of The Name
There is some uncertainty over the origin of the medieval name "Morea", which is first recorded only in the 10th century in the Byzantine chronicles.
Traditionally scholars thought the name originated from the word morea (μορέα), meaning morus or mulberry, a tree which, though known in the region from the ancient times, gained value after the 6th century, when silkworms were smuggled from China to Byzantium. Then the mulberry began to be planted so copiously in the Peloponnesus that the plain around Thebes came to be known as Morokampos and Thebes gained renown for its silk. No silk is now made at Thebes and mulberry trees are not prominent, but the Theban plain retains its name Morokampos from the mulberry trees which once gave the town its prosperity.
The British Byzantinist Steven Runciman suggested that the name comes "from the likeness of its shape to that of a mulberry leaf."
Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer's alternate proposal that the name comes from the Slavic word more, meaning "sea".
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