Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also known as West Timor, constitutes part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Within West Timor lies an exclave of East Timor called Oecusse District. The island covers an area of . The name is a variant of timur, Malay for "east"; it is so called because it lies at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Mainland Australia is less than 500 km away, separated by the Timor Sea. Language, ethnic groups and religion Anthropologists identify eleven distinct ethno-linguistic groups in Timor. The largest are the Atoni of western Timor and the Tetum of central and eastern Timor. Most indigenous Timorese languages belong to the Timor–Babar branch of the Austronesian languages spoken throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Although lexical evidence is lacking, the non-Austronesian languages of Timor are thought to be related to languages spoken on Halmahera and in Western New Guinea. Some are so mixed that it is difficult to tell which family they descend from. The official languages of East Timor are Tetum and Portuguese, while in West Timor it is Indonesian. Indonesian, a standardized dialect of Malay, is also widely spoken and understood in East Timor. Christianity is the dominant religion throughout the island of Timor, at about 90% of the population. However, it is unequally distributed as West Timor is 58% Protestant and 37% Catholic, and East Timor is 98% Catholic and 1% Protestant. Islam and animism make up most of the remainder at about 5% each across the island. Geography Timor is located north of Australia, and is one of the easternmost Sunda Islands. Together with Sumba, Babar and associated smaller islands, Timor forms the southern outer archipelago of the Lesser Sunda Islands with the inner islands of Flores, Alor and Wetar to the north, and beyond them Sulawesi. Timor is the principal island of the Outer Banda Arc, which is being uplifted by arc-continent collision with the Australian continent. Timor consists mostly of rocks from the Australian continental margin that are accreted to the Banda Arc. It occupies a forearc position in front of the active volcanic arc that forms the islands in the Flores region to the north.