Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and north-west of mainland Australia. Southeast Asia is bordered to the north by East Asia, to the west by South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, to the east by Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, and to the south by Australia and the Indian Ocean. Apart from the British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of Maldives in South Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia is the only other subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. Mainland Southeast Asia is completely in the Northern Hemisphere. East Timor and the southern portion of Indonesia are the only parts that are south of the Equator.
Eurasian Singaporeans are Singaporeans of mixed European and Asian descent. Their Asian ancestry trace from Colonial India to other colonies while their European ancestry trace back to western Europe primarily, although Eurasian settlers to Singapore in the 19th century came largely from other European colonies. These included British Malaya and British Sarawak, part of the former British Raj India, of the former Portuguese India and Chittagong, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. When the European maritime powers colonised Asian countries, such as Colonial India, Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia and Indochina, from the 16th to 20th centuries, they brought into being a new group of commingled ethnicities known historically as Eurasians.
South Asian ethnic groups are an ethnolinguistic grouping of the diverse populations of South Asia, including the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. While Afghanistan is variously considered to be part of both Central Asia and South Asia, Afghans are generally not included among South Asians.
Cocos Malays are a community that form the predominant group of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, which is now a part of Australia. Today, most of the Cocos Malay can be found in the eastern coast of Sabah, Malaysia, because of diaspora originating from the 1950s during the British colonial period.
The concept of a Malay race was originally proposed by the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), and classified as a brown race. Malay is a loose term used in the late 19th century and early 20th century to describe the Austronesian peoples.
Overseas Malays refer to individuals with Malay race ancestry living outside Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, South Thailand and neighbouring Malay home areas.
Malaysian Malays are Malaysians of Malay ethnicity whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in the Malay world. In 2015 population estimate, with the total population of 15.7 million, Malaysian Malays form 50.8% of Malaysia's demographics, the largest ethnic group in the country. They can be broadly classified into two main categories; Anak Jati and Anak Dagang.
Tamil Malaysians, also known as Malaysian Tamilar, are people of full or partial Tamil descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu, India and the Tamil regions of north-east Sri Lanka. The majority of 1.8–2 million people 80% of the Malaysian Indian populations in Malaysia were from Indian Tamil ethnic groups from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The bulk of Tamil Malaysian migration began during the British Raj, when Britain facilitated the migration of Indian workers to work in plantations. There are, however, some established Tamil communities from before British colonialism.
Thai Malays, with officially recognised terms including 'Malayu-descended Thais' and 'Malay', is a term used to refer to ethnic Malay citizens of Thailand, the sixth largest ethnic group in Thailand. Thailand is home to the third largest ethnic Malay population after Malaysia and Indonesia and most Malays are concentrated in the Southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala, Songkhla and Satun. Phuket and Ranong, home to a sizeable Muslim population, also have many people who are of Malay descent. A sizeable community also exists in Thailand's capital Bangkok, having descended from migrants or deportees who were relocated from the South from the 13th century onwards.
Asian people are the people of Asia. The term may also refer to their descendants.
Kedahan Malays or commonly known as Orang Utara ('Northerners'), is a sub-group of Malays who are native to northern Malaysia and in southernmost parts of Thailand and Burma. They are among the earliest settlers in the Malay peninsula. Kedahan Malays comprised at least 15% of the total Malaysian Malay population and constitute over 75% of the Kedah state population, thus making them the largest ethnic group in the state of Kedah.
Overseas Indonesians are people of Indonesian birth or descent who live outside of Indonesia. As of 2021, there are about 9 million overseas Indonesians globally, 5.3 million undocumented overseas Indonesian workers, 4.7 million overseas Indonesian officially, and 3.254 million overseas Indonesian legal workers.
Sri Lankan Malays (Sinhala: මැලේ ජනතාව Shri Lanka Mæle Janathava ; මැලේ මිනිස්සු / ජා මිනිස්සු Mæle Minissu / Ja Minissu ; Tamil: இலங்கை மலாய் மக்கள், romanized: Ilaṅkai Malāi Makkal are Sri Lankans with full or partial ancestry from the Indonesian Archipelago, Malaysia, or Singapore. In addition, people from Brunei and the Philippines also consider themselves Malays. The term is a misnomer as it is used as a historical catch-all term for all native ethnic groups of the Malay Archipelago who reside in Sri Lanka; the term does not apply solely to the ethnic Malays. They number approximately 40,000 and make up 0.2% of the Sri Lankan population, making them the fourth largest of the five main ethnic groups in the country.
Malayisation or Malayization is a process of assimilation and acculturation, that involves acquisition or imposition of elements of Malay culture, in particular, Islam and the Malay language, as experienced by non-Malay populations of territories fully controlled or partially influenced by historical Malay sultanates and modern Malay-speaking countries. It is often described as a process of civilisational expansion, drawing a wide range of indigenous peoples into the Muslim, Malay-speaking polities of Maritime Southeast Asia. Examples of Malayisation have occurred throughout Asia including in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.
The Malay world or Malay realm, is a concept or an expression that has been used by different authors and groups over time to denote several different notions, derived from varied interpretations of Malayness, either as a racial category, as a linguistic group or as a cultural group. The use of the term 'Malay' in much of the conceptualisation is largely based on the prevalent Malay cultural influence, manifested in particular through the spread of the Malay language in Southeast Asia as observed by different colonial powers during the Age of Discovery and spread of Islam. The term remains highly controversial outside of Malay-speaking areas and as such is considered politically charged and irredentist rather than purely cultural.
Malay is spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in the Palawan, Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages, such as Sabah Malay.
Malays played a significant role in pre-Hispanic Philippine history. Malay involvement in Philippine history goes back to the Classical Era with the establishment of Rajahnates as well as the Islamic era, in which various sultanates and Islamic states were formed in Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, and around Manila.
The Javanese diaspora is the demographic group of descendants of ethnic Javanese who emigrated from the Indonesian island of Java to other parts of the world. The Javanese diaspora includes a significant population in Suriname, with over 13% of the country's population being of Javanese ancestry. Other major enclaves are found in Australia, French Guiana, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Singapore, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.
