archipelago

thumb|upright=1.6|The Indonesian Archipelago, located in Asia and [[Oceania, is the largest archipelagic state in the world.]] thumb|upright|The Aegean Sea with its large number of islands is the origin of the term archipelago. thumb|The Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Examples of archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the origin of the term), the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Stockholm Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago (which includes the Indonesian and Philippine Archipelagos), the Lucayan (Bahamian) Archipelago, the Japanese archipelago, the Hawaiian Archipelago, and the Galapagos.

==Etymology== The word archipelago is derived from the Italian arcipelago, used as a proper name for the Aegean Sea, itself perhaps a deformation of the Greek Αιγαίον Πέλαγος. Later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands (since the sea has a large number of islands). The erudite paretymology, deriving the word from Ancient Greek ἄρχι- (arkhi-, "chief") and πέλαγος (pélagos, "sea"), proposed by Buondelmonti, can still be found.