Nevertheless, it is fair to note that the great majority of terreiros claim adsorption to a single nation, be it Nagô, Angola or Jeje. But these main nations may be qualified by particular sub-nations. For instance, the Jeje terreiros in Bahia acknowledge the existence of Jeje-Marrim, Jeje-Daomé and Jeje-Savaru variants. All of them worship the vodun but they claim ritual specificity to mark their difference. While the first term of the expression, Jeje, as already mentioned, was forged in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, the second one (Marrim, Daomé and Savaru) corresponds to actual African political entities in the Gbe-speaking area (Mahi, Dahomey and Savalu). This suggests that behind the generic labels created by the slave trade, the idiom of nations encodes the memory of specific African ethnicities. Equally the Nagô orixá worship can be subdivided, or can sometimes give rise to distinct separate nations like the Keto, Ijexá or Oyó.  
One of the aims of this overview is to underscore the flexible, transformative, and yet resilient nature of this system of religious classification, together with its rich regional variation. A first conclusive general remark is that whatever the region, the idiom of 'religious nations' connotes a distinctive mark of presumed  
Africanness which serves to oppose, and contrast with, coexistent and concurrent religious institutions, often characterized as more syncretic and permeable to Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism or Amerindian healing traditions. Thus, the Keto and Jeje Candomblé is opposed to the Candomblé de Caboclo (often associated with the Angola nation), and more broadly to Umbanda; the Xangô to the Jurema and Catimbó; the Batuque to the Linha Cruzada; the Tambor de Mina to the Tambor de Mata; and so on. And yet, what one finds on the ground is a highly creative and dynamic religious continuum, in which it is extremely difficult to establish clear boundaries, but which the discourse of practitioners and intellectuals insistently tries to separate and compartmentalize.