A popular argument suggests that the Malays originated from Indonesia because there are many descendants of Indonesian ethnicities among modern Malay population in Malaysia. There may be truth of this claim to certain extent, but Indonesian ethnicities constitute only a small portion of the population according to census conducted by British colonial administrators from 1911 to 1957. This was the time when the term Malay was still separated from other Indonesian ethnicities. During this period, only up to 14.5%(1931) of the total 'Malaysian' ^note population identified themselves belong to any of the Indonesian ethnicities ( Javanese, Bugis, Minang, etc), with major concentration only in south and western states of Malay peninsular. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of 'Malaysian' ^note belong to either one of the following Malay sub-ethnicities; Kedahan, Pahang, Kelantanese, Terengganuan and Perakian. [4]

^ note: The term 'Malaysian' was used in older census to refer to all natives of the Malay archipelago

Nevertheless, thanks to the institutionalised policy of force Malayisation carried out by the government, which no longer allow self-identification to any of the Indonesian ethnicities in any government documents, many of the descendants of these immigrants are now self-identified as Malays and only informally retain parts of their cultural traits.