• The Romani (also spelled Romany), or Roma, are an ethnicity of Indian origin, living mostly in Europe and theAmericas.Romani are widely known among Anglophonic people by the exonym "Gypsies" (or Gipsies). Another exonym is Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians and Sinti .

• Romani are dispersed, with their concentrated populations in Europe—especially Central and Eastern Europe andAnatolia, Iberia, and Southern France. They originated in India and arrived in Mid-West Asia, then Europe, around 1,000 years ago,either separating from the Dom people or, at least, having a similar history;[the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the sixth and eleventh century.Since the nineteenth century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one millionRoma in the United States; and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the nineteenth century from eastern Europe. Brazil also includes Romani descended from people deported by the government of Portugal during the Inquisition in the colonial era. In migrations since the late nineteenth century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.

• The Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large (several times as large according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.

• For a variety of reasons, many Romanies choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated four million Romani people in Europe (as of 2002), although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. Several million more Romanies may live out of Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.

• As a result of the caste system, inherited from India, and their movement on Asia, Europe, America and Australia, many designations can be given to individual Roma groups. 

• Interior of a gipsy's house in Brazil c. 1820, byDebret• • Camping gypsies near Düsseldorf, Germany, c. 1905, by Emil Volkers• All-encompassing self-description is always "Rom".[ Even when some groups are not using an endonym

"Roma", they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy Roma-Gadjo.Other groups, using different endonyms are, for example:

• Finnish Kale, in Finland;[ the same endonym with Spanish Calé is probably a coincidence.Iberian Kale, mostly in Spain, also known as gitanos, but also in Portugal , also known as ciganos "Kala"or "kale" means "black" in Sanskrit, neo-Indian languages and the Romani language. They use the word "Kale" for their language, which is para-Romani. For their language, they use the term Caló.

• Welsh Kale, in Wales, originally from Spain • Manush in FranceThey are a sub-group of Sinti.[The word "Manush" means "person" in Sanskrit, neo-

Indian languages and the Romani language.• Romanichal, in the United Kingdom, emigrated also to the United States and Australia• Romanisæl, in Sweden and Norway.Sinti, in Germanyand Northern Italy. Sinti do not speak of themselves

as Roma, but they use "romanes" as a name for their language.Other Romani sub-groups include:• Bashaldé• Boyash (Lingurari, Ludar, Ludari, Rudari, or Zlătari)[citation needed] from Romanian words for

various crafts:Lingurari (spoon makers),  Rudari (wood crafters or miners)or "băieşi" (miners); the semantic overlapping occurring due to the homophony of two different notions: in Serbian, ruda "ore", hence rudar"miner," and ruda "stick, staff, rod, bar, pole" (in Hungarian rúd, and in Romanian rudă, lemma no. 2)

• ChurariErlides (also Yerlii or Arli), in Greece• Kalderash, primarily from Romania, from which they spread into Bessarabia and Ukraine• Lovari, from Hungaruy Machvaya, from Serbia• Lalleri, from Austria and Germany, as well as western Czech Republic("Sudetenland").• Luri • Romungro (Modyar or Modgar) from Hungary and neighbouring Carpathian countries[citation needed]• Ungaritza• Ursari (bear-trainers; in Romanian urs "bear")• Muslim Roma (Horahane), living in Greece and in Turkey• Zlătari/Aurari (goldsmiths)• Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, in the Balkans[

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's migration 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

• According to a legend reported in Shahnameh and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, men and women, lute playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox and a donkey and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music gratuitously for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king was angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags on their asses and go wandering around the world.

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

• More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concordmarkers 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 the "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent, but more recent 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 different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Hindi and Persian forms for comparison. Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.

Hindi Romani Domar

iLomavre

nPersia

n

1 ek ekh, jekh yika yak,

yekyak, yek

2 do duj dī lui du, do

3 tīn trin tærən tərin se

4 cār štar štar išdör čahār

5 pāñc pandž pandž pendž pandž

6 che šov šaš šeš šaš, šeš

7 sāt ifta xaut haft haft

8 āţh oxto xaišt hašt hašt

9 nau inja na nu nuh, noh

10 das deš des las dah

20 bīs biš wīs vist bist

100 sau šel saj saj sad

• The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practice of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow this rule.

• Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs, as well as to take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men in general have more authority than women. Women gain respect and authority as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.

• Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life, and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs(because they produce emissions), as well as the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure, and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is considered impure for forty days after giving birth.

• Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus groups for cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead). Some animals are also considered impure, for instance cats because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot.

• Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.

• Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.

• Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers ofmanele. Zdob şi Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgenţă in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia,Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.

• Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.

• Many musical instruments like violins and guitars are said to have originated from the Romani. Many dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are also said to have originated from them.

• The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Europe. European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.

• The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.

• The ancestors of modern day Romani people were previously Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on their respective regions they had migrated through.[119] Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and form a very significant proportion of the Romani people.