The term "Mat Salleh" is often used by Malay speakers as a colloquial expression to refer to a white Caucasian. How this expression came about is difficult to completely determine. This is because there exists several versions of its origins passed down by word, with little (or none) official documentation to ascertain this. The different versions are:
The word might have been derived from the expression "mad sailor". The native's first encounters with Westerners were typically drunk sailors. Their intoxicated behavior led to the non-English speaking locals learning the expression “Mad Sailors” from other Sailors. The expression however, was articulated as “Mat Salleh” instead and the term has stuck till now.
Another version is also derived from the expression "Mat Salleh". In this version, shipwrecked and marooned in a foreign land, many sailors panicked and ran away at their first sights of a native inhabitants whom they assumed were cannibals. As mentioned above, the expression "Mad Sailors" that the natives learnt to explain their eccentric behavior got mispronounced as "Mat Salleh" due to their unfamiliarity with the English language and its pronunciation protocols.
It could also have been derived from the meaning of the word "Mat Salleh" which means preacher or one who preaches referring to early colonials who came with the secondary agenda of preaching Christianity.
The word salleh is the outdated spelling for the word salih in Malay meaning albino or white due lack of skin pigmentation. The term Mat is a slang word for Mohammad which in turn refers to a man. Hence, the term Mat Salleh refers to an albino man. The current spelling is Mat Salih according to the official dictionary by the Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka Malaysia (the official guardian organization of the Malay language in Malaysia). White Caucasians have fair, almost albino like skin, hence the term Mat Salleh. In Indonesia, white Caucasians are referred as orang bule in the Malay-based Bahasa Indonesia. Orang means person and bule means albino because a Bahasa Indonesia synonym of bule is bulai.
