Polo by no means stands alone in giving the name of Java to the island now called Sumatra.  The terms Jawa, Jawi, were applied by the Arabs to the islands and productions of the Archipelago generally (e.g., Luban jawi, “Java frankincense,” whence by corruption Benzoin), but also specifically to Sumatra.  Thus Sumatra is the Jawah both of Abulfeda and of Ibn Batuta, the latter of whom spent some time on the island, both in going to China and on his return.  The Java also of the Catalan Map appears to be Sumatra. Javaku again is the name applied in the Singalese chronicles to the Malays in general. Jau and Dawa are the names still applied by the Battaks and the people of Nias respectively to the Malays, showing probably that these were looked on as Javanese by those tribes who did not partake of the civilisation diffused from Java.  In Siamese also the Malay language is called Chawa; and even on the Malay peninsula, the traditional slang for a half-breed born from a Kling (or Coromandel) father and a Malay mother is Jawi Pakan, “a Jawi (i.e.  Malay) of the market.”  De Barros says that all the people of Sumatra called themselves by the common name of Jauijs. (Dec.  III. liv. v. cap. 1.)

There is some reason to believe that the application of the name Java to Sumatra is of very old date.  For the oldest inscription of ascertained date in the Archipelago which has yet been read, a Sanskrit one from Pagaroyang, the capital of the ancient Malay state of Menang-kabau in the heart of Sumatra, bearing a date equivalent to A.D. 656, entitles the monarch whom it commemorates, Adityadharma by name, the king of “the First Java” (or rather Yava).  This Mr. Friedrich interprets to mean Sumatra.  It is by no means impossible that the Iabadiu, or Yavadvipa of Ptolemy may be Sumatra rather than Java.

An accomplished Dutch Orientalist suggests that the Arabs originally applied the terms Great Java and Little Java to Java and Sumatra respectively, not because of their imagined relation in size, but as indicating the former to be Java Proper.  Thus also, he says, there is a Great Acheh (Achin) which does not imply that the place so called is greater than the well-known state of Achin (of which it is in fact a part), but because it is Acheh Proper.  A like feeling may have suggested the Great Bulgaria, Great Hungary, Great Turkey of the mediaeval travellers.  These were, or were supposed to be, the original seats of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Turks.  The Great Horde of the Kirghiz Kazaks is, as regards numbers, not the greatest, but the smallest of the three.  But the others look upon it as the most ancient.  The Burmese are alleged to call the Rakhain or people of Arakan Mranma Gyi or Great Burmese, and to consider their dialect the most ancient form of the language.  And, in like manner, we may perhaps account for the term of Little Thai, formerly applied to the Siamese in distinction from the Great Thai, their kinsmen of Laos.