Java is not borrowing from just Scala, it's borrowing from all languages and adding its all twists to things, just like Scala itself has always done (it's cleary inspired by Java itself, ML and Haskell, probably more).

As in Scala:

    // define a type alias
    type UserId = Long

    // can be used as a regular type
    val userId: UserId = 123L
    val userIds: List[UserId] = List(1L, 2L, 3L)