The Tandroy live in the far south of Madagascar and speak a Malagasy dialect. Their land is known as "the Androy," literally, "where the roy ( Mimosa delicatula ) is," but more commonly rendered as "land of the thorny bush" or "spiny desert," both of which are allusions to the highly adapted vegetation of this semiarid region. "Tandroy," the name of the people, translates as "those of the thorny bush." Numbering more than 400,000, the Tandroy are of an average size among the twenty officially recognized ethnicities in Madagascar.