List of Malays

This is a list of Malay people.

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Malays

Malays may refer to:

Ethnic Malays

Malays (Malay: Melayu, Jawi: ملايو) are an ethnic group of Austronesian peoples predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra and coastal Borneo, as well as the smaller islands which lie between these locations — areas that are collectively known as the Malay world. These locations today are part of the modern nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand.

There is considerable genetic, linguistic, cultural, and social diversity among the many Malay subgroups, mainly due to hundreds of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnicity and tribes within Maritime Southeast Asia. Historically, the Malay population is descended primarily from the earlier Malayic-speaking tribes that settled in the region, who founded several ancient maritime trading states and kingdoms, notably Brunei, Kedah, Langkasuka, Gangga Negara, Chi Tu, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Melayu and Srivijaya, and the later Cham and Austronesian settlers.

Malay race

The concept of a Malay race was originally proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), and classified as the brown race.Malay is a loose term used in the late 19th century and early 20th century to describe the Austronesian peoples / categorize Austronesian speakers into a race.

Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races. The concept of a "Malay race" differs with that of the ethnic Malays centered on Peninsular Malaysia and parts of the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Etymology

The earliest records of the word Melayu or Malayu came from a Chinese record that reported a kingdom named Malayu had sent the envoy to the Chinese court for the first time in 645 CE. It was recorded in the book Tang Huiyao collected by Wang Pu during the Song dynasty. Another Chinese source mentioned the kingdom of Malayu. Two books were written by a buddhist monk I-tsing or I Ching (義淨; pinyin Yì Jìng) (634–713), in his journey from China to India in 671 wherein he reported: