Hoanya people

Scholars like Kaim Ang suggest the name of the people, Hoanya, comes from Taiwanese Hokkien Hoan-iá (番仔, lit.

"barbarian"), originally from the perspective of ethnic Chinese referring to non-Chinese, especially historical natives of Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

[2][3] The name of the people group retained the obsolete diminutive suffix -iá (仔) in Hokkien, which originally came from a weak form of kiáⁿ or káⁿ (囝) and today survives in Hokkien as the diminutive suffix -á (仔).

Huán-nià (番仔) is attested in the Dictionario Hispanico Sinicum (1626-1642)[4] and use of the obsolete -iá (仔) suffix is also recorded in Medhurst's 1832 Hokkien dictionary.

However, the same word, Huan-a, has different connotations in other Hokkien-speaking communities, such as in Fujian (China), the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.