The Malay Archipelago consists of several countries that form an archipelago below southeast Asia and above Australia. The countries that consists of the Malay Archipelago are as follows:

• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• The Philippines
• Papua New Guinea
• Singapore
• East Timor
• Brunei

*Note that the island of New Guinea is sometimes not included in some definitions of the Malay Archipelago.

The term "Malay" comes from European explorers who discovered that a race of natives covered all of the archipelago and dubbed them the "Malay".