A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
 Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress | |
 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2–12 million[1][2][3][4] | |
| United States | 1,000,000 estimated with Romani ancestry[a][5][6] |
| Brazil | 800,000 (0.4%)[7] |
| Spain | 750,000–1,500,000 (1.9–3.7%)[8][9][10][11][12] |
| Romania | 569,500–1,850,000 (3.4–8.32%)[13][14] |
| Turkey | 500,000–2,750,000 (3.8%)[9][15][16][17] |
| Bulgaria | 325,343[b]–750,000 (4.9–10.3%)[19][20] |
| Hungary | 309,632[c]–870,000 (3.21–8.8%)[21][22] |
| France | 300,000–1,200,000 (0.21%)[23][24][25][26] |
| Argentina | 300,000[d][27][28] |
| United Kingdom | 225,000 (0.4%)[29][9][30] |
| Russia | 205,007[e]–825,000 (0.6%)[9] |
| Serbia | 147,604[f]–600,000 (2.1–8.2%)[31][32][9] |
| Italy | 120,000–180,000 (0.3%)[33][9] |
| Greece | 111,000–300,000 (2.7%)[34][35] |
| Germany | 105,000 (0.1%)[9][36] |
| Slovakia | 105,738[g]–490,000 (2.1–9.0%)[37][38][39] |
| Albania | 100,000-140,000 (3.62%-5.06%)[40] |
| Iran | 2,000–110,000[41][42] |
| North Macedonia | 46,433 (2.53%)[43] |
| Sweden | 50,000–100,000[9][44] |
| Ukraine | 47,587[h]–260,000 (0.6%)[9][45] |
| Portugal | 52,000 (0.5%)[9][46][47] |
| Austria | 40,000–50,000 (0.6%)[48] |
| Kosovo | 36,000[i] (2%)[9][49] |
| Netherlands | 32,000–40,000 (0.2%)[9] |
| Poland | 17,049[e]–32,500 (0.1%)[9][50] |
| Croatia | 16,975[e]–35,000 (0.8%)[9][51] |
| Mexico | 15,850[52] |
| Chile | 15,000–20,000[27] |
| Moldova | 12,778[e]–107,100 (3.0%)[9][53] |
| Finland | 10,000–12,000 est. (0.2%)[54] |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 8,864[e]–58,000 (1.5%)[9][55] |
| Colombia | 2,649–8,000[27][56] |
| Belarus | 7,316[e]–47,500 (0.5%)[57] |
| Latvia | 7,193[e]–12,500 (0.6%)[9] |
| Canada | 5,255–80,000[58][59] |
| Montenegro | 5,251[e]–20,000 (3.7%)[60] |
| Czech Republic | 5,199[j]–40,370[e] (Romani speakers)–250,000 (1.9%)[61][62] |
| Australia | 5,000–25,000[63] |
| Slovenia | 3,246[9] |
| Lithuania | 2,571[9] |
| Denmark | 5,500[64] |
| Ireland | 22,435[9] |
| Georgia | 1,200[9] |
| Belgium | 30,000[65] |
| Cyprus | 1,250[66] |
| Switzerland | 25,000–35,000[9] |
| Languages | |
| Romani, Para-Romani varieties, languages of native regions | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Christianity[67] Islam[67] Shaktism tradition of Hinduism[67] Romani mythology Buddhism (minority)[68][69] Judaism (conversion through marriage to Jewish spouses)[70] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Ghorbati, Doms, Lom, Ḍoma, Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians; other Indo-Aryans | |
The Romani, also spelled Romany or Rromani (/ˈroʊməni/ ROH-mə-nee or /ˈrɒməni/ ROM-ə-nee) and colloquially known as the Roma (sg.: Rom), are an ethnic group of Indo-Aryan origin[71][72][73] who traditionally lived a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Romani originated in the Indian subcontinent, in particular the region of present-day Rajasthan.[74] Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed by historians to have occurred around 1000 CE.[75][76][77] Their original name is from the Sanskrit word डोम, ḍoma and means a member of the Dom caste of travelling musicians and dancers.[78][79] The Roma population moved west into the Ghaznavid Empire and later into the Byzantine Empire.[80][81] The Roma are thought to have arrived in Europe around the 13th to 14th century.[82] Although they are widely dispersed, their most concentrated populations are located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Spain, and Turkey.
In the English language, Romani people have long been known by the exonym Gypsies or Gipsies,[83] which some Roma consider a racial slur.[84][85] However, this is not always the case; for example, the term is actually preferred by most English and Welsh Romanies, and is used to refer to them in government documentation.[86][87][88] The attendees of the first World Romani Congress in 1971 unanimously voted to reject the use of all exonyms for the Romani, including "Gypsy".[89]
Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated 1 million Roma in the United States[6] and between 800,000 and 1 million in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from eastern Europe. Brazilian Romani are mostly descendant from German/Italian Sinti (in the South/Southeast regions), and Roma and Calon people. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from Sinti and Roma deportees from the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[90] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and Canada. Though often confused with Irish Travellers and the Yenish people in western Europe, the Romani are culturally different.[91][92][93]
The Romani language is an Indo-Aryan language with strong Balkan and Greek influence.[94] It is divided into several dialects, which together are estimated to have more than two million speakers.[95] Because the language has traditionally been oral, many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence, or else of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani in varieties sometimes called para-Romani.[96]
Population and subgroups
Romani populations
There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[97] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for a variety of reasons, such as fear of discrimination.[98][99] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations, some who no longer identify only as Romani and some who do not identify as Romani at all. Then, too, some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
Despite these challenges to getting an accurate picture of the Romani dispersal, there were an estimated 10 million in Europe (as of 2019),[100] although some Romani organizations have given earlier estimates as high as 14 million.[101][102] 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.[103]
Outside Europe there may be several million more Romani, in particular in the Middle East and the Americas.[104][105]
Romani subgroups
The Romani identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.[106][107][108][109]
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.[110] Even when subgroups do not use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[110] 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.[110][111]
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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").[110] Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of north India—with whom the Roma have genetic,[112] cultural and linguistic links—has come to imply "dark-skinned" in some Indian languages.[113] 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:
- Arlije (also Erlides, Yerli, meaning "local", from the Turkish word Yerli) in the Balkans and Turkey to describe sedentary Muslim Roma.
- Bashaldé – Hungarian-Slovak Roma diaspora in the US from the late 19th century.[114]
- Bergitka Roma (also Carpathian Roma), Poland, mainly Goral lands.
- Çerge also Čergarja (nomad), Nomadic Lifestyle Muslim Roma in the Balkans and Turkey.
- Calé, the endonym used by both the Spanish Roma (gitanos) and Portuguese Roma (ciganos).[115] 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.[110]
- Garachi Shia Islam followers Roma people in Azerbaijan
- Gurbeti Muslim Roma in Northern Cyprus, Turkey and Balkans.
- Horahane or Xoraxai, also known as "Turkish Roma" or "Muslim Roma", a religionym and confessionym in the Balkans for Muslim Romani.[110]
- Kaale, in Finland and Sweden.[115][110]
- Kale, Kalá, or Valshanange – a Welsh English endonym used by some Roma clans in Wales.[k] (Romanichal also live in Wales.) Romani in Spain are also attributed to the Kale.[12]
- Lalleri, from Austria, Germany, and the western Czech Republic (including the former Sudetenland).[116][117][118][119]
- Lovari, chiefly in Central Europe, speaking a dialect of Romani influenced by Hungarian;[120] known in Serbia as Machvaya, Machavaya, Machwaya or Macwaia.[110]
- Lyuli, in Central Asian countries.
- Polska Roma, largest Romani subgroup in Poland.
- Rom in Italy.
- Roma in Romania, commonly known by ethnic Romanians as țigani, including many subgroups defined by occupation:
- Argintari "silversmiths."[121]
- Aurari "goldsmiths."[121]
- 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",[122] and Ludar (sing.), Ludari (pl.), and Rudari may mean "woodworkers" or "miners".[123] (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,[124] and in Romanian, rudă).[125]
- Churari[126] (from Romanian ciurari "sieve-makers")
- Colari "carpet dealers"[127]
- Florari "flower-sellers."[121]
- Kalderash, from Romanian căldărar, literally "bucket-maker", meaning "kettle-maker", "tinsmith", "tinker"; also in Poland, Moldova and Ukraine.[121]
- Lăutari "musicians" (lăută = lute).[121]
- Ungaritza (blacksmiths, bladesmiths).
- Ursari ""dancing bears" trainers" (from Romanian urs "bear").[110]
- Zlătari "goldsmiths."[110]
- Roma or Romové, Czech Republic.
- Roma or Rómovia, Slovakia.[128]
- Romanichal, in the United Kingdom,[115][110] emigrated also to the United States, Canada and Australia.[129]
- Romanisæl, in Norway and Sweden.
- Romanlar, Turkish-speaking Muslim Roma in Turkey, also called Çingene or Şopar, with all subgroups, who are named after their professions, like:
- Cambazı (acrobatics and horse trading)
- Sünnetçi (circumciser)
- Kuyumcu (goldsmith)
- Subaşı (soldier or butler)
- Çiçekçi (flower-seller)
- Sepetçi (basket-maker)
- Ayıcı (bear-leader)
- Kalaycı (tinsmith)
- Müzisyen (musician)
- Şarkıcı (singer)
- Demirci (blacksmith) etc., but the majority of Turkish Roma work as day laborers too.[110]
- Roms or Manouche (from manush, "people" in Romani) in France.[110][130]
- Romungro or Carpathian Romani from eastern Hungary and neighbouring parts of the Carpathians.[131]
- Sepečides, meaning "basket-maker"; Muslim Roma in West Thrace, Greece.
- Sinti or Zinti, predominantly in Germany,[115][110][132] and northern Italy; Sinti do not refer to themselves as Roma, although their language is called Romanes.[110]
- Zargari people, Shia Muslim Roma in Iran, who once came from Rumelia/Southern Bulgaria from the Maritsa Valley in Ottoman times 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.[133][134] They settled in the areas that are now Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Albania, 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 19th and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[l]
In Brazil, the Romani are mainly called ciganos by non-Romani Brazilians. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale) of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazil's president from 1956 to 1961, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline, and Washington Luís, the last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.[135]
Persecution against the Romani has led to many of the cultural practices being extinguished, hidden or modified to survive in a country that has excluded them ethnically and culturally. The very common carnivals throughout Brazil are one of the few spaces in which the Romani can still express their cultural traditions, including the so-called "carnival wedding" in which a boy is disguised as a bride and the famous "Romaní dance", picturesquely simulated with the women of the town parading in their traditional attire.[136]
Origin
Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[133][134][137] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about early Romani migration are based on linguistic theory.[138] There is also no known record of Romani migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[139]
Shahnameh legend
According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, 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 so 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 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 by 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.[140]
Linguistic evidence
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.[141]
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.[142] 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 from India separated by several centuries.[143][144]
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.[145] The following table presents the numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with the corresponding terms in Sanskrit, Hindi, Odia, and Sinhala to demonstrate the similarities.[146] Note that the Romani numerals 7 through 9 have been borrowed from Greek.
Languages Numbers
|
Romani | Domari | Lomavren | Sanskrit | Hindi | Odia | Sinhala |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ekh, jekh | yika | yak, yek | éka | ek | ekô | eka |
| 2 | duj | dī | lui | dvá | do | dui | deka |
| 3 | trin | tærən | tərin | trí | tīn | tiṇi | thuna/thri |
| 4 | štar | štar | išdör | catvā́raḥ | cār | cari | hathara/sathara |
| 5 | pandž | pandž | pendž | páñca | pā̃c | pañcô | paha |
| 6 | šov | šaš | šeš | ṣáṭ | chah | chôô | haya/saya |
| 7 | ifta | xaut | haft | saptá | sāt | satô | hata/satha |
| 8 | oxto | xaišt | hašt | aṣṭá | āṭh | aṭhô | ata |
| 9 | inja | na | nu | náva | nau | nôô | nawaya |