The Ilocano people are descended from Austronesian-speaking people from Southern China who traveled to the archipelago via present-day Taiwan. Families and clans arrived by viray or bilog, or "boat". The term Ilocano, as commonly accepted, originates from i-, which denotes "from", and looc, meaning "cove or bay", thus giving them the name "People of the bay." Some modern scholars, however, argue that as far as the Ilocano tradition of giving names to their place of residency is concerned, the i + looc etymology is actually an exonym. These scholars suggest that the term Ilocano comes from "i-", "from", and "lucong", "the flat lands" or "the lowlands". Ilocanos also refer to themselves with the endonym Samtoy, a contraction of the phrase sao mi atoy, meaning "this is our language".