When I was in Borneo (the only island in the region with three countries occupying parts of it), unless what we were doing was related to a national government,

When I was in Borneo (the only island in the region with three countries occupying parts of it), unless what we were doing was related to a national government, we said Borneo. When my colleagues who were working in Sulawesi referred to their work, I never once heard “Indonesia”. Yet, and I have seen this story a few times now, it has exclusively been with the term Indonesia. With a country as big and diverse as Indonesia the island/islands one is working on does matter. So it seems deliberate to avoid naming the geographic term. And it is controversial.