Sri Lankan Malays in the context of "Misnomer"

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It is located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and is separated from India by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest, and it lies across the Bay of Bengal from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the east. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, while the largest city, Colombo, is the administrative and judicial capital which is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Kandy is the second-largest city and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The majority of the population speak Sinhala, while Tamil is the second most-spoken language. They are spoken by approximately 17 million and 5 million people respectively.

Sri Lanka has a population of approximately 22 million and is home to several cultures, languages and ethnicities. The Sinhalese people form the majority of the population, followed by the Sri Lankan Tamils, who are the largest minority group and are concentrated in the north of the island; both groups have played a major role in the island's history. Other long-established groups include the Moors, Indian Tamils, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and Vedda.

Sri Lankan Moors (Tamil: இலங்கைச் சோனகர், romanized: Ilaṅkaic Cōṉakar; Arwi: اَیلَیچْ چٗونَكَرْ‎; Sinhala: ලංකා යෝනක, romanized: Lanka Yonaka; formerly Ceylon Moors; colloquially referred to as Sri Lankan Muslims) are an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.3% of the country's total population. Most of them are native speakers of the Tamil language. The majority of Moors who are not native to Sri Lanka's Northern and Eastern provinces also speak Sinhalese as a second language. They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Sri Lankan Muslim community is mostly divided between Sri Lankan Moors, Indian Moors, Sri Lankan Malays and Sri Lankan Bohras. These groups are differentiated by lineage, language, history, culture and traditions.

The Sri Lankan Moors are of diverse origins with some tracing their ancestry to Arab traders who first settled in Sri Lanka around the 9th century, and who intermarried with local Tamil and Sinhala women. Recent genetic studies, however, have suggested a predominant Indian origin for Moors compared to the Arab origin speculated by some. Perera et al. (2021) in their genetic analysis of the Moors stated the following in their report: "In contrast, Sri Lankan Moors have descended exclusively from Muslim male merchants of either Arabic or of Indian origin, who came to Sri Lanka for trading. During the fourteenth century, they started to settle in coastal areas in Sri Lanka and espoused local women, who were either Sinhalese or Sri Lankan Tamil". The concentration of Moors is the highest in the Ampara, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts.

The Peranakan Chinese (/pəˈrɑːnəˌkɑːn, -kən/) are an ethnic group defined by their genealogical descent from the first waves of Southern Chinese settlers to maritime Southeast Asia, known as Nanyang (Chinese: 南洋; pinyin: nán yáng; lit. 'Southern Ocean'), namely the British, Portuguese, and Dutch colonial ports in the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago, as well as Singapore. The Peranakan Chinese are often simply referred to as the Peranakans. Peranakan culture, especially in the dominant Peranakan centres of Malacca, Singapore, Penang, Phuket, and Tangerang, is characterized by its unique hybridization of ancient Chinese culture with the local cultures of the Nusantara region, the result of a centuries-long history of transculturation and interracial marriage.

Immigrants from the southern provinces of China arrived in significant numbers in the region between the 14th and 17th centuries, taking abode in the Malay Peninsula (where their descendants in Malacca, Singapore and Penang are referred to as Baba–Nyonya); the Southern Thailand (where their descendants are referred to as Baba-Yaya), primarily in Phuket, Trang, Phang Nga, Takua Pa, and Ranong; Terengganu (where their descendants are referred to as Cheng Mua Lang) and North Borneo from the 18th century (where their descendants in Sabah are also referred to as Sino-Natives). Intermarriage between these Chinese settlers and their Malay, Thai, Javanese, or other predecessors in the region contributed to the emergence of a distinctive hybrid culture and ostensible phenotypic differences. Through colonisation of the region, the impact and presence of the Peranakan Chinese spread beyond Nusantara. In Sri Lanka, the Peranakan Chinese went on to contribute to the development of the Sri Lankan Malay identity that emerged in the nation during Dutch rule.