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".