Where the Morales name comes from

Morales comes from the Spanish mora, a mulberry, and in the plural it names the trees rather than the fruit. So the family was named for a place: the mulberry grove, or the land that held one. The same word sits on the map in several countries, with a Morales in Bolivar and another in Cauca in Colombia, and a municipality of Morales in Izabal, Guatemala. Whether a particular family took the name from the trees or from one of those towns, the mulberry is at the bottom of it.