Island of the Gentiles or Gentoos

[Adisa]

Genesis 10:5:  "By these were divided the islands of the Gentiles in their lands, every one according to his tongue and their families in their nations."

Discovered an interesting word in the dictionary today, Gentoos.  The definitions for the word Gentoos reads, 1. a Hindu. 2. any of the non-European languages of the Hindus, especially Telugu.  Gentoos derived from the Portuguese word gentio meaning Gentile.  

The Telugu language is a Dravidian Language spoken in Southeast India in the region of North of Madras.  One of the definitions in the dictionary reads as follows, Dravidian 2. a member of an Australoid race occupying parts of Southern India and Ceylon.  Ceylon was formerly known as Serendib.  Serendib is the old Arabic, Persian and Urdu name for Sri Lanka. 

One of many considerations is that the Veddas named the location Lanka meaning island.  Vedda is a Singhalese word meaning bowman or hunter.

[Clifford Black]

@  Adisa, Please remind me, there must be more discussion about meanings!!!

B.

[Adisa]

Sri Lankan Moors (Tamil: இலங்கைச் சோனகர், commonly referred to as Muslims) are the third largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.23% of the country's total population. They are native speakers of the Tamil language^[3][4] and predominantly followers of Islam. The Tamil term for Muslims in Sri Lanka is சோனகர் (Soonagar) or சோனி (Sooni) probably derived from Sunni. While some sources describe them as a subset of the Tamil people who had adopted Islam as their religion and spoke Tamil as their mother tongue, which they continue to do so,^{[5][3][6][7][8]} other sources trace their ancestry to Arab traders (Moors) who settled in Sri Lanka some time between the 8th and 15th centuries.^{[9][10][11][2]} Moors today use Tamil as their primary language, with influence from Arabic.^[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Moors