Sinhalas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Members of the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, traditionally associated with the island's Buddhist and Sinhalese-speaking communities
2. People belonging to the Sinhalese ethnic majority of Sri Lanka, who speak the Sinhala language as their mother tongue
3. Individuals of the Sinhalese community native to Sri Lanka, whose heritage and language make up the island's dominant population

Etymology: The word "Sinhalese" (plural "Sinhalas" is unusual; the people are the Sinhalese) comes from Sanskrit "Simhala", meaning "lion-people" or "people of the lion", from "simha" (lion) and the suffix "-la". The name is tied to a legend recorded in the Pali chronicle "Mahavamsa", in which the founder of the island's ancestral line, Vijaya, was said to be the son of a lion and a princess from northern India. The legend is literary rather than historical, but it gave the people and the island their name. The island itself was known to Europeans through Greek and Latin forms, and the English word "Ceylon" descends from Portuguese "Ceilão", which came from a Sinhala-derived name. The word "Sinhalese" entered English as a term for the language and people, and it became the standard name for the island's majority community in colonial-era writing. Note that the word "Sinhala" in Sinhala-language usage refers to both the language and the ethnic group, and the English plural is usually written "Sinhalese" for both singular and plural.