<P> While the earliest records invariably mention "Morys" in a court setting, and a little later in the Lord Mayors' Processions in London, it had assumed the nature of a folk dance performed in the parishes by the mid 17th century . </P> <P> There are around 150 Morris sides (or teams) in the United States . English expatriates form a larger part of the Morris tradition in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong . There are isolated groups in other countries, for example those in Utrecht and Helmond, Netherlands; the Arctic Morris Group of Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden; as well as in Cyprus . </P> <P> The name is first recorded in the mid-15th century as Morisk dance, moreys daunce, morisse daunce, i.e. "Moorish dance". The term entered English via Flemish mooriske danse . Comparable terms in other languages are German Moriskentanz (also from the 15th century), French morisques, Croatian moreška, and moresco, moresca or morisca in Italy and Spain . The modern spelling Morris - dance first appears in the 17th century . </P> <P> It is unclear why the dance was so named, "unless in reference to fantastic dancing or costumes", i.e. the deliberately "exotic" flavour of the performance . The English dance thus apparently arose as part of a wider 15th - century European fashion for supposedly "Moorish" spectacle, which also left traces in Spanish and Italian folk dance . The means and chronology of the transmission of this fashion is now difficult to trace; the Great London Chronicle records "spangled Spanish dancers" performing an energetic dance before Henry VII at Christmas of 1494, but Heron's accounts also mention "pleying of the mourice dance" four days earlier, and the attestation of the English term from the mid-15th century establishes that there was a "Moorish dance" performed in England decades prior to 1494 . </P>

Where does the name morris dancing come from
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