Some medieval travellers such as Ibn Battuta called the islands ' () from the Arabic word ' ("palace"), which must be how the Berber traveller interpreted the local name, having been through Muslim North India, where Perso-Arabic words were introduced to the local vocabulary. This is the name currently inscribed on the scroll in the Maldive state emblem. The classical Persian/Arabic name for Maldives is '. The Dutch referred to the islands as the ' (), while the British anglicised the local name for the islands first to the "Maldive Islands" and later to "Maldives".