Saturday, August 20, 2005

Roman, Romany, Romania

Roman is needless to say ancient Roman who built the Roman Empire. People in modern Romania are thought to be one of direct descendants from Roman people who colonised and settled in this region of Eastern Europe. As a matter of fact, they use Roman alphabet and their language is related to Latin. So there's no particular problem on this.
The question I've been holding is the word Romany. Gypsy was called so because they were thought to be from Egypt in Europe, but actually they are thought to be originated from northen India. At some time in history they started moving to the West for unknown reasons.
They call themselves Romany or they prefer to be called so, in Romany, their language, Rom means just 'man' or 'husband'.
Eskimo don't like to be called so but Inuit that means 'man' in their language, Ainu don't like to be called so but'Utari' that means 'man' in their language. Why?
All three people have had hard times in their long history, perhaps their men were killed and women were forced to marry newly arrived people, and as the times go by people in their tribe unintentionally started calling themselves in their master's name. The name used to be a master's name but in the end because they are so interchanged and mingled that they couldn't notice who they were any more.

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