Are there any Rroma here?

[pulykamell]

@Quixotic

I had the same question.

In a nutshell, it seems “roma” more often refers to Rome, Italy (or Tony Roma’s Ribs), while “rroma” appears to be the self-identifying spelling of the people themsleves. I say “self-identifying” because I can’t find a cite on dictionary sites (or the OED) for “rroma”. I poked around a bit on the Rroma site, but couldn’t find any explanation of the double r; maybe it’s the correct spelling as per the original language, and the single R is simply an uncorrected anglicization. (Or maybe someone with more knowledge than I will be able to answer more thoroughly. )

I did Google, and I checked the dictionaries. The dictionaries all seem to have “Roma” as the spelling. When I lived in Budapest, the Roma Rights Center spelled it with a single “r” and all the literature in English and Hungarian reflected this spelling. Obvious, it seems from Google that the double-r spelling isn’t exactly rare. I had just never seen it before.