Note that that is more of a lifestyle or culture, not a ethnicity.
Genetic analysis has shown Travellers to be of Irish extraction, and that they likely diverged from the settled Irish population in the 1600s, during the time of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The centuries of separation has led to Travellers becoming genetically distinct from the settled Irish. Traveller rights groups long advocated for ethnic status from the Irish government, succeeding in 2017. The centuries of separation has led to Travellers becoming genetically distinct from the settled Irish. Traveller rights groups long advocated for ethnic status from the Irish government, succeeding in 2017.
My understanding is that tinker comes from tin and that it means (or was supposed to mean) a kind of itinerant tinsmith.
Hey, i-tin-erant. Never noticed that before.
Travellers are formally recgnised as an ethnic group in Ireland (having campaigned for such recognition). Travellers have the protections afforded to an ethnic group under the equality act in England and Wales.
Yes, my grandfather told me that Travellers would make or repair buckets for the local farmers and householders, and were called tinkers because of their trade. However the trade became obsolete and the word became an insulting way to refer to travelling people. Or an insulting way to refer to settled people by comparing them to “dirty” travelling people.
Another legitimate trade, that of rendering animals, was and is the basis for an even more insulting name, the Traveller equivalent of the n-word.
I had to look this up. Apparently the word is “knacker” which I’ve never heard of except in the sense of being knackered. Is that expression considered passé now, I assume?
No “knackered” meaning “worn out” is still in use. “Knacker” is a very hateful word used against Travellers (or against settled people to insult them by comparing them to Travellers) and is unfortunately also still in use.
Yes, i don’t think the original meaning of tinker includes “itinerant”, i think it was just a word for a tin smith, someone who worked with tin.
And i think itinerant comes from the Latin, “iter”, referring to a road or to travel.
Interesting.
I wasn’t saying that about tinsmiths in a historical sense but about the (perceived) figure of the gypsy who comes around and repairs pots and pans and whatnot.
And I really wasn’t saying that tinerant has anything to do with tin. It was just an amusing observation.
Back on topic, I never even heard the word “roma” until later in life (I’m from the US) and still find objection to the word “gypsy” to be a little odd. If someone of that group objjected to “gypsy,” I wouldn’t use it in their company, of course.
And then of course we have ‘pikey’, an offensive term which apparently derives from ‘pike’, meaning road.
I’m not sure if that one is purely used in the UK, or Ireland as well (or beyond).
Where does it say that? All I can find is where it says “The Government acknowledges that this is likely to be an undercount, with estimates of between 100,000 to 300,000 Gypsy/Traveller people”, but we’ve already established that that’s not the same as “Irish Travellers”, but also, depending on when the counting was done, could include other groups like Romanichal and Scottish Travellers etc.
As I mentioned above, I learned the word “Roma” from the first person I met who was in that group, a young man in one of my college classes. I live in the US. He found “gypsy” offensive. So I stopped using that word to refer to people – not a hard thing to do, as I can’t say I used it very often before that.
Why use it at all now that you know?
Here is the thing - you can’t tell a person is Roma or a Traveller or anyone else associated with the word by looking at them. So you risk opening up your mouth and sounding like you are either unknowledgeable (and as a Doper, we never want to appear unknowledgeable when we have the knowledge) or rude.
(And I miss Kal as well…as I said, my family completely integrated. So I know very little other than what I have searched out and have no firsthand experience.)
It seems to me that a group would have to be extremely insular, to have recognizable genetic markers after a mere 400 years or so since divergence. How much of that insularity, I wonder, is due to outsiders not welcoming them, vs. due to them not welcoming outsiders?
Relevant, I think:
All the time I was earlier reading this thread, I was well aware of a publicized outbreak of the moth Lymantria dispar in this area, and had been seeing a few (though not many) of the caterpillars myself; and had been thinking of them, as well as seeing them referred to by, their common name.
And, until today when I saw this article, I never once made the connection.
The walls in one’s own head are the hardest ones to see.
There was some anger over the portrayal of the Vistani in the Curse of Strahd, the newest adaptation of the original I-6 Ravenloft module from 1983. I personally didn’t think they were all that bad, certainly no worse than most other groups in the game, but I think I’m in the minority. At least in online discussions.
It was an ill advised book though I don’t remember if it was particularly contentious when it was published in 1994. But, yeah, it’s pretty bad. When you start assigning magical powers and abilities to a real life people based on the purity of their blood it might be a good time to reassess your intent.
Good move, but it may take a long time for that name to change in popular parlance. The linked article says the insect has been called by that name since at least 1908, and an awful lot of people know it by that name.
(The ant is more obscure, and it may be a lot easier to change it’s popular name, since the name isn’t all that popular.)
But as an example of the persistence of language, Worker’s Compensation was called “workman’s compensation” until 1978, and I STILL hear people call it by the old name.
Of course, by 1978 women were now comprising a much larger segment of the work force. So – finally – Workmen’s Compensation Law was renamed Worker’s Compensation Law.
Well dang, one must be right on the ball here among the well-informed Doper community! I just came here to post about renaming those various “Gypsy” bugs, only to find that two Dopers have beaten me to it by mere hours!
The early bird (or those in the more Easterly time zones) catches the headlines! Those of us who sleep late (or in the more Westerly time zones) get to read all about it right here on the Dope!