Spratly Islands

Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly, who sighted Spratly Island in 1843.

• enPR: sprǎtʹlē

Spratly Islands

1. A group of islands, atolls, reefs, and cays in the South China Sea.
   • 1945 January 20, “Seven New Year's Days”, in Army Talks‎, volume III, number 2, page 5:

     In the eastern hemisphere the Japanese occupied the island of Hainan off French Indo-China; annexed the Spratly islands further south, between Indo-China and Borneo; and continued local gains in north China.

   • 1975 May 11, “ROC still holds Spratly Islands; no Red challenge”, in Free China Weekly‎, volume XVI, number 18, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1:

     The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are still occupied by troops of the Republic of China, according to Major General Li Chang-hao, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense.

   • 2015 May 21, “Chinese navy warns off U.S. reconnaissance plane over Spratlys”, in Focus Taiwan‎, archived from the original on 27 September 2022, Cross-Strait:

     A United States P8A surveillance aircraft flying near the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea on May 20 was asked by the Chinese navy to leave the area.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Spratly Islands.

• Spratlys
• (from Filipino) Kalayaan
• (from Mandarin Chinese) Nansha
• (from Vietnamese) Truong Sa

• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Spratly Islands or Nansha Islands”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎, volume 3, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 3003, column 1
• “Spratly Islands, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Spratly Islands”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.