I see. If we look at "Indonesia" as a civilization (a continuous sociocultural system from ancient times to the present) rather than as an empire/kingdom (a nation that existed only for a limited period of time), then it would certainly be more appropriate to call it "Indonesia" than "Majapahit".
Are not most of these uniques specifically Javanese though, at least in origin, except the Kampung? I don't see why at least the name Javanese could work. Though I guess calling the civ Javanese would still limit the city list and wouldn't include a multitude of cities on other islands like Sumatra and Bali etc.
Although I don't think I'm a hurr-durr type person in particular, I am in favor of civs being designed around one era. But I agree with the rest of your post that with the current way civs are designed, and the implemention of Indonesia in Civ 6 specifically, that a narrower name like "Majapahit" doesn't make sense.
- I might be missing something, but I am a bit confused where people are getting the idea that Malay refers to a broad grouping which covers all of these languages. As far as I am aware, Javanese and the Malay language are only connected by the "Malayo-Polynesian languages" subgroup of the Austronesian languages. Malayic languages split off into their own branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup afterwards. ("Hesperonesian languages" or "Western Malayo-Polynesian languages" are obsolete terms.)
- I find it strange to name the Civ "Malay" just because the Archipelago is called the "Malay Archipelago".
- Malay as a racial group seems to stem from enlightenment-era ideas of biological racism. I would prefer to avoid that.
Wouldn't the inverse also be true? Doesn't "Malay" also prioritize Malays above the rest?
I have never seen or heard the term "Malay" used that way. I don't think we can make up our own ways of using labels, regardless of intention. It'd just confuse players and members of that group both.
"Indonesia," as a nation, was a revolutionary construct by Sukarto in the 1940's and 1950's, built on the chasis and borders of the Colonial Dutch East Indies it replaced. It is one of THOSE artificial post-Colonial nations, like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Iraq, Syria, Israel (especially in terms of it's claim over Palestine, but in, and, of, itself, too), and most modern Sub-Saharan African Nations, and arguably Burma/Myanmar, and Malaysia (as opposed to Malaya). Which brings us to the Malays, a
@FishFishFish claim they are an academically- and rigidly-defined ETHNIC-group covering most people in the region. What FishFishFish is talking about is NOT an ethnic group, and the referrence they used clearly shows the flaw in that claim. They are a branch of LANGUAGES in a LINGUISTIC FAMILY. They are no more a single ethnic group than Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Flemish, Scheizerseutch, and Anglo-Saxons are all one ethnicity, and should be one, single civ, for speaking Germanic languages in the Indo-European Family, or Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, and those who contentiously call themselves Macedonians, today (at least contended by Greece) are one ethnicity, and should be one civ, and every ethnicity who has lived for the last several centruries, and has their ethnic roots, and ethno-genesis, in, the vast majority of Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, except speakers of Khoisian languages and Afrikaans, are all one ethnictiy and should be one civ, because they speak languages of the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family, and that speakers of Arabic, Assyrian, Hebrew, most Northern and Central Ethipian langanges, Maltese, several languages still spoken in Yemen, and a bunch of now-extinct and archaeological languages from Middle Eastern civilizations of Antiquity are all the same ethnicity and should all be one civ because they speak languages from the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic Langauge Family. We have exactly the same situation as portrayed by FishFishFish.