Baba-Nyonya

Baba House Museum at Melaka

Peranakan and Baba-Nyonya are terms used for the descendants of late 15th and 16th-century Chinese immigrants to the Nusantara region during the Colonial era. This community in Melaka, they address themselves as "Nyonya Baba" instead of "Baba-Nyonya". Nyonya are for the ladies and Baba are for the gentlemen. It applies especially to the ethnic Chinese populations of the British Straits Settlements of Malaya and the Dutch-controlled island of Java and other locations, who have adopted partially or in full Nusantara customs to be somewhat assimilated into the local communities.

They are the elites of Singapore, more loyal to the British than to China. Most have lived for generations along the straits of Malacca and not all intermarried with the local Malays. They are usually traders, the middleman of the British and the Chinese, or the Chinese and Malays, or vice versa. They almost always have the ability to speak two or more languages. In later generations, some lost the ability to speak Chinese as they became assimilated to the Malay Peninsula's culture and started to speak Malay fluently as a first or second language.

While the term Peranakan is most commonly used among the ethnic Chinese for those of Chinese descent also known as Straits Chinese (土生華人; named after the Straits Settlements), there are also other, comparatively small Peranakan communities, such as Indian Hindu Peranakans (Chitty), Indian Muslim Peranakans (Jawi Pekan) (Jawi being the Javanised Arabic script Pekan a colloquial contraction of Peranakan) and Eurasian Peranakans (Kristang = Christians).

The group has parallels to the Cambodian Hokkien, who are descendents of Hoklo Chinese. They maintained their culture partially despite their native language gradually disappearing a few generations after settlement.