Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, the names ''Mestiços'' ( Portuguese for "Mixed People") or ''Casados'' ("Married") referred to people of mixed Portuguese and Sri Lankan ( Sinhalese and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

) descent. The names can be traced back to the 16th century.

History

The first ''mestiços'' descended from Portuguese explorers, soldiers and merchants who reached Ceylon (an earlier name of Sri Lanka) after the pioneering voyage of

Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (; ; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497–1499) was the first to link ...

. When the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

took over coastal Ceylon, the descendants of the ''mestiços'' took refuge in the central hills of

Kingdom of Kandy The Kingdom of Kandy was a monarchy on the island of Sri Lanka, located in the central and eastern portion of the island. It was founded in the late 15th century and endured until the early 19th century. Initially a client kingdom of the Ki ...

under Sinhalese rule. By the middle of the 18th century, the descendants of the ''mestiços'' had partly merged with descendants of the Dutch, giving rise to a

Eurasian Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipela ...

community (a mixture of Portuguese, Dutch, Sinhalese and Tamil), known as the Burghers. Some of these people spoke Portuguese, others spoke

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

. Later, the Burgher community developed into two different communities: the Dutch Burghers and the

Portuguese Burghers The Portuguese Burghers are an ethnic group in Sri Lanka, of mixed Portuguese and Sri Lankan descent. They are largely Roman Catholic and some still speak the Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese language, a creole based on Portuguese mixed with Sinhalese. ...

. The Portuguese presence in Ceylon was extended to non-urban areas, there is a wide Portuguese heritage in Sri Lankan society, culture and administration. Lexicon of Portuguese origin can be found in the

Sinhala language Sinhala ( ; , ''siṁhala'', ), sometimes called Sinhalese (), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also s ...

(at least 1,000 words), there may be more but insufficient study has been carried out.

References

European diaspora in Sri Lanka Portuguese diaspora in Asia Portuguese people in Sri Lanka {{SriLanka-stub