Malay

The term Malay (or melayu) has a cultural, demographic and geographical connotation related to Southeast Asia, especially the insular part of it.

Archaeological remains of the Malay Kingdom in Jambi (Sumatra).

History

The term is very old, it is likely that the Malay people used the term to refer to themselves over 2000 years ago. Ancient Hindu texts such as the Ramayana and the Vayú Puraná from the 3rd century call Sumatra the Malay Island (Sanskrit: Malayadvipa).

In the 7th century the Melayu Kingdom was established and in 1347 the state of Malayapura. In the book The Voyages of Marco Polo, the word Malauir is used > to refer to the south of the Malay Peninsula.

Uses

Linguistics

• Malaysian language o bahasa melayu: Traditional French and most important in the region.
• Malaysian and Polynesian languages: Group of Austrian languages, so called by the linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt in the 19th century, thus relating the languages of Indonesia to those of the Pacific.
• Malian languages: Subgroup of languages to which Malay belongs.

Demographics

• Ethnia malaya: Austrian village of Borneo, Sumatra and the Malacca peninsula.
• Malay: As a gentile equivalent to MalaysianAlthough less used than this.
• Malay Race: An anthropological concept used in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to the peoples of Southeast Asia.

Geography

• Malay Archipelago: Modern name of the Insulin region, equivalent to the insular part of Southeast Asia.
• Malaysian Peninsula: Synonym Malacca peninsulaSouth of Indochina.
• Borneo Malayo: Used to refer to Eastern Malaysia.

Biology

• Butterfly malaya
• Malay banana
• Bad bear
• Tapir malayo
• Bad Tiger
• Puercoespín malayo

Derivative Terms

• Malaysia: Deriva de Malaysia. In 1850 English George Samuel Windsor Earl proposed to call the region Melayunesia (Isles of Malays) or Indunesiaresting for the first alternative.
• Malacca: Concerning the Malay region.
• Malgache: Deriva de malagasy, native name that probably comes from the Malays that colonized Madagascar.