The Southwest coast of New Guinea from Karoefa (133°27'E) to the entrance to the Bensbak River (141°01'E), and thence a line to the Northwest extreme of York Peninsula, Australia (11°05′S 142°03′E / 11.083°S 142.050°E / -11.083; 142.050).

European use of the name "Arafura Sea" dates back to at least 1663, when Joan Blaeu recorded in the text on his wall map of the East Indies ("Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus") that the inland inhabitants of the Moluccas call themselves "Alfores".

[3] The name also appeared in George Windsor Earl's 1837 Sailing Directions for the Arafura Sea, which he compiled from the narratives of Lieutenants Kolff and Modera of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

[4] Thomas Forrest sailed through the Moluccas (Maluku Islands) in 1775, and documented that there were people who called themselves the "Harafora" living in the western end of New Guinea, in subordination to the "Papuas".

[5] The geographer Conrad Malte-Brun repeated Forrest's reports of a race of "Haraforas" in 1804,[6] and added Borneo to the list of places this group inhabited.

AJ van der Aa's 1939 Toponymic Dictionary, recently rediscovered in the Dutch National Archives, has this explanation for the name of the sea: "The inhabitants of the Moluccas called themselves 'haraforas', translating 'Anak anak gunung' as 'children of the mountains'."