Tausug people

Tausūg people
Suluk people
Sulu people

Tausug woman in a pangalay dance.
Total population
(c. 1.3 million)
Regions with significant populations
Philippines        1,235,000 (Basilan, Palawan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Manila, Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga)  Malaysia        209,000 (North-eastern part of Sabah, Kuala Lumpur, Johor)  Indonesia        21,000 (North Kalimantan)  Brunei
Languages
Tausūg, Zamboangueño Chavacano, Cebuano, Filipino, English, Malay, Indonesian
Religion
Predominantly Sunni Islam, small Christian minority (particularly Roman Catholicism)
Related ethnic groups
Moros, Malay people, Filipino people, and other Austronesian people

Moros,

The Tausūg or Suluk people are an ethnic group of the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The Tausūg are part of the wider political identity of Muslims of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan known as the Moro ethnic group, who constitute the third largest ethnic group of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan. They originally had an independent state known as the Sulu Sultanate, which once exercised sovereignty over the present day provinces of Basilan, Palawan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, the eastern part of the Malaysian state of Sabah (formerly North Borneo) and North Kalimantan in Indonesia.

"Tausug" means "the people of the current", from the word tau which means "man" or "people" and sūg (alternatively spelled sulug or suluk) which means "[sea] currents". The term Tausūg was derived from two words tau and sūg (or suluk in Malay) meaning "people of the current", referring to their homelands in the Sulu Archipelago. Sūg and suluk both mean the same thing, with the former being the phonetic evolution in Sulu of the latter (the L being dropped and thus the two short U's merging into one long U). The Tausūg in Sabah refer to themselves as Tausūg but refers to their ethnic group as "Suluk" as documented in official documents such as birth certificates in Sabah, which are written Malay.