Gypsy Blue

The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with significant concentrations in the Americas.

In the English language, the Romani people are widely known by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered pejorative by many Romani people due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity as well as its historical use as a racial slur. For versions (some of which are cognates) of the word in many other languages (e.g., , , it, zingaro, , and ) this perception is either very small or non-existent. At the first World Romani Congress in 1971, its attendees unanimously voted to reject the use of all exonyms for the Romani people, including ''Gypsy'', due to their aforementioned negative and stereotypical connotations.

Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Roma originated in the Indian subcontinent; in particular, the region of Rajasthan. They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Southern France), as well as Western Asia (mainly Turkey). The Romani people arrived in West Asia and Europe around the 14th century.

Since the 19th century, some Romani people have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition. In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani people have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada. Though often confused with them, the Romani people are culturally different from Irish Travellers and the Yenish people, two groups who may be related to each other.

Romani is an Indo-Aryan language with strong Balkan and Greek influence. It is divided into several dialects, which together are estimated to have more than two million speakers. Because it has traditionally been an oral language, many Romani people are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.

The Romani began to leave India about 1,000 years ago. They probably left to escape the invasion of Afghan general Mahmud of Ghazni early in the 11th century. Mahmud's troops likely pushed the Romani out of northern India and into the area that is now Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Population and subgroups

Romani population

For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019), although some Romani organizations give estimates as high as 14 million. Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union, there are an estimated 6 million Romanis. Several million more Romanis may live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.

Romani homeland

There is no single Romani "homeland". A home country for the Romani people has been proposed, under the name Romanistan.

Romani subgroups

Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is ''Rom''. Even when subgroups do not use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and ''Gadjo'' (non-Roma). For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is ''Romanes''.

Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the castes and subcastes in India, which the founding population of ''Rom'' almost certainly experienced in their South Asian '' urheimat''.

Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word ''kalo'' or ''calo'', meaning "black" or "absorbing all light". This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Sanskrit काल ''kāla'': "black", "of a dark colour"). Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic, cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages. Hence names such as ''kale'' and ''calé'' may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.

Other endonyms for Romani include, for example:
* ''Ashkali'' – Albanian-speaking Muslim Roma communities in the Balkans
* ''Arlije'' (also ''Erlides'', ''Yerli'' meaning local, from the Turkish word Yerli) in Balkans and Turkey to describe sedentary Muslim roma.
* ''Bashaldé'' – Hungarian-Slovak Roma diaspora in the US from the late 19th century.
* ''Çerge'' also ''Čergarja'' (Nomad), Nomadic Lifestyle Muslim Roma at Balkans and Turkey.
* ''Calé'' is the endonym used by both the Spanish Roma (''gitanos'') and Portuguese Roma ''ciganos''; '' Caló'' is "the language spoken by the ''calé''".
* ''Dasikane'' or ''Daskane'', meaning ''slaves'' or ''servants'', a Religionym and confessionym for Orthodox Christian Roma in the Balkans.
* ''Sepečides'' meaning ''Basketmaker'', Muslim roma in west thrace Greece.
* ''Kaale'', in Finland and Sweden.
* ''Garachi'' Shia Islam followers Roma people in Azerbaijan
* ''Gurbeti'' Muslim Roma in Northern Cyprus, Turkey and Balkans.
* Kale, ''Kalá'', or ''Valshanange'' – Welsh English endonym used by some Roma clans in Wales.The Welsh language alphabet lacks the letter "k". (Romanichal also live in Wales.) Romani in Spain are also attributed to the Kale.
* ''Horahane'' or ''Xoraxai'', also known as "Turkish Roma", Muslim Roma, a Religionym and confessionym in the Balkans for Muslim Romani people.
* ''Lalleri'', from Austria, Germany, and the western Czech Republic (including the former Sudetenland).
* ''Lovari'', from Hungary, known in Serbia as ''Machvaya'', ''Machavaya'', ''Machwaya'', or ''Macwaia''.
* ''Lyuli'', in Central Asian countries.
* Romanlar in Turkey, Turkish speaking Muslim roma in Turkey, also called Çingene or Şopar, with all subgroups, who named after their professions, like:
** ''Cambazı'' (Acrobatics and horse trading)
** ''Sünnetçi'' (Circumciser), like a Mohel
** ''Kuyumcu'' ( Goldsmith)
** ''Subaşı'' (Water carrier)
** ''Çiçekçi'' ( Flower seller)
** ''Sepetçi'' (Basketmaker)
** ''Ayıcı'' (Bear-leader)
** ''Kalaycı'' (Tinsmith)
** ''Müzisyen'' (Musician)
** ''Şarkıcı'' ( Singer)
** ''Demirci'' (Blacksmith) etc., but the majority of Turkish Roma work as day laborers too.
* ''Rom'' in Italy.
* ''Roma'' in Romania, commonly known by majority ethnic Romanians as ''Țigani'', including many subgroups defined by occupation:
** Boyash, also known as ''Băieși'', ''Lingurari'', ''Ludar'', ''Ludari'', or ''Rudari'', who coalesced in the Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania. ''Băieși'' is a Romanian word for "miners". ''Lingurari'' means "spoon makers", ''Ludar'', ''Ludari'', and ''Rudari'' may mean "woodworkers" or "miners". (There is a semantic overlap due to the homophony or merging of lemmas with different meanings from at least two languages: the Serbian ''rudar'' miner, and ''ruda'' stick, staff, rod, bar, pole (in Hungarian ''rúd'', and in Romanian ''rudă'').)
** ''Churari'', from Romanian ''Ciurari'', "sieve makers", Zlătari "gold smiths"
** '' Ursari'' ( bear trainers, from Moldovan/Romanian ''urs'' "bear"),
** ''Ungaritza'' blacksmiths and bladesmiths
** ''Argintari'' silversmiths.
** ''Aurari'' goldsmiths.
** ''Florari'' flower sellers.
** ''Lăutari'' singers.
** ''Kalderash'', from Romanian ''căldărar'', ''lit.'' bucketmaker, meaning kettlemaker, tinsmith, tinker; also in Moldova and Ukraine.
* Roma or ''Romové'', Czech Republic
* Roma or ''Rómovia'', Slovakia
* Romanichal, in the United Kingdom, emigrated also to the United States, Canada and Australia
* ''Romanisæl'', in Norway and Sweden.
* ''Roms'' or ''Manouche'' (from ''manush'' "people" in Romani) in France.
* ''Romungro'' or Carpathian Romani from eastern Hungary and neighbouring parts of the Carpathians
* '' Sinti'' or ''Zinti'', predominantly in Germany, and Northern Italy; ''Sinti'' do not refer to themselves as Roma, although their language is called ''Romanes''.
* ''Zargari people'', Shia Muslim Roma in Iran, who once came from Rumelia/Southern Bulgaria from the Maritsa Valley in Ottoman Time and settled in Persia.

Diaspora

The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier. They settled in the areas that are now Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain, by order of volume. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and Iberian Calé or Caló, and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million."Today, estimates put the number of Roma in the U.S. at about one million." Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at 800,000 by the 2011 census.

The Romani people are mainly called ''ciganos'' by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup ''Calés'' (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline, and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.

Unfortunately, the persecution against the gypsy people has led to the fact that many of the cultural practices have been extinguished, hidden or modified in order to survive in a country that has excluded them ethnically and culturally.

The very common Carnivals throughout the entire Brazilian territory are one of the few spaces in which the Romani people can still express their cultural traditions, being a moment in which they can practice their traditional dances and rituals, actively participating in the fairs. with the reading of the tarot, celebrating traditional symbolic acts such as gypsy weddings and in other less common cases they have adapted to the carioca carnivalesque culture contributing their own nuances, as is the case of the so-called "carnival wedding" in which a child of The male sex is disguised as a bride and a gypsy wedding or the famous "Romaní Dance" is picturesquely simulated, where the women of the town parade during carnival acts dancing in their traditional gypsy attire.

There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide. Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination. Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations, some who no longer identify only as Romani and some who don't identify as Romani at all.

As of the early 2000s, an estimated 3.8 to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor, although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million. Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.

The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.

Origin

Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma. Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani migration's early history are based on linguistic theory. There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.

''Shahnameh'' legend

According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the ''Shahnameh'', from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–439) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand '' luris'', lute-playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. However, the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.

Linguistic evidence

The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.

Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative. This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone ( Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.

In phonology, the Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages, especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.

Genetic evidence

Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled castes and scheduled tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.

In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago". They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found the Roma to display genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".

Genetic research published in ''European Journal of Human Genetics'' "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".

Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations", while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect". A 2020 whole-genome study confirmed the Northwest Indian origins, and also confirmed substantial Balkan and Middle Eastern ancestry.

A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group". The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males". A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".

Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total. Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

A study of 444 people representing three ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).

Y-DNA composition of Muslim Romani people from Šuto Orizari Municipality in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:
* Haplogroup H – 59.6%
* Haplogroup E – 29.8%
* Haplogroup I – 5.3%
* Haplogroup R – 3.%, of which the half are R1b and many are R1a
* Haplogroup G – 1.8%

Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%. While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány

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