Little attention was paid to all this before the start of the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s. Then the communist rebels, seeking to have the support of indigenous tribes, they became known as Orang Asal, in the sense of "native people", from the Arabic word, "`asali" (أصلي meaning, "original", "well-born", or "aristocratic"). The Communists did have the support of the Orang Asli, and the government, in an attempt to win over the indigenous population, began to address them with the terminology, among other things. Thus was born a new, slightly modified in comparison with the insurgent, the term "Orang Asli", in the same sense of "primitive people".