Sunda Islands

Etymology

The name of the "Sunda islands" denotes the Sunda Shelf in the west and the Sahul Shelf in the east. Other terms associated with "Sunda" include the Sunda Island Arc or the arc of Sunda Islands, Sunda Fold or tectonic folding in the Natuna Sea, the Sunda Trench, and Sundaland.

The term "Sunda" derives from the Sanskrit word "Cuddha," meaning white. During the Pleistocene era, there was a large volcano named Mount Sunda located north of Bandung in West Java. Its eruption covered the surrounding area with white volcanic ash, giving rise to the name "Sunda." The use of the term "Sunda" to refer to the Indonesian region dates back to the claims of Claudius Ptolemaeus in 150 AD.

In the 16th century, the Portuguese established diplomatic relations with the Sunda Kingdom and mapped the territory of the Sunda Kingdom and its surroundings. They categorized the region into Greater Sunda (Sunda Besar) for the larger western islands and Lesser Sunda (Sunda Kecil) for the smaller eastern islands. Since then, the term "Sunda" has been widely adopted in earth sciences (geology-geography) as a reference for the Indonesian region, surpassing the usage of "Indonesia" in this field. The terms Greater Sunda and Lesser Sunda are commonly used in geological-geographical literature.