Borrowing from language__Malay. The history of domesticated ducks in island Southeast Asia is still poorly understood. Although a term for 'wild duck' (*ŋaRaq) was present in language__PMP, there is no non-suspect linguistic evidence for early domestication of ducks by language__AN-speaking peoples. The presence of a mid-front vowel in many of the terms cited here points to borrowing from language__Malay. At the same time the occurrence of reflexes in language__Malagasy and language__Old Javanese indicates that diffusion of the term (and the associated practice of domesticating ducks) must have begun by the 7th century A.D. All of this is consistent with a hypothesis that the practice of domesticating ducks was introduced to island Southeast Asia during the Indianization of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.

This is one of the few cases in which a language__Malay loanword appears to have reached Taiwan, but given the practical value of the animal and the likelihood that diffusion to Taiwan took place directly from the Philippines a hypothesis of borrowing is not at all unlikely. Although a language__Sanskrit term for 'goose' was borrowed by language__Malay, bébék appears to be an onomatopoetic formation from native lexical material. language__Gedaged bibi 'turkey', language__Tongan pīpī 'turkey' and similar terms in other language__OC languages seem clearly to be the product of an independent development.