# Why does Hungarian = Gypsy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 24, 2004, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395 "2004-11-24T01:41:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/21 "2004-11-24T18:19:11Z")
That sounds typical of policies from all over Europe at various times - essentially trying to shunt travellers into a ‘normal’ lifestyle. Many don’t see the offer of a house as ‘better’ housing, because it removes one integral element! ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/22 "2004-11-24T18:31:29Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > Are you saying that home fans never do this? I don’t understand why supporters should only do this when they’re on the road. Sounds bizarre. I think he’s implying that fans don’t heckle members of their own team… ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/23 "2004-11-24T18:45:17Z")
This is making me hungry. Let me explain… In Germany, they had a specialty at the local swimming pool _Imbiss_ (a general term for a little fast food stand or restaurant) called _Pommes Frites mit Zigeuner Sosse_ (French Fries with Gypsy sauce). Basically the Gypsy sauce was a sweetish tomato based sauce with chunks of peppers and onions and heavy on the paprika. Mmmmm…it was good. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/24 "2004-11-24T19:56:14Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > I think he’s implying that fans don’t heckle members of their own team… _She_. But yes, that’s what I meant. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/25 "2004-11-24T23:52:05Z")
**Kal** , thanks for the information in response to my question. Very interesting subject. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/26 "2004-11-25T01:39:31Z")
> [@ruadh](#): > > It’s not uncommon at football matches over here for players of any Eastern European nationality to be denigrated by the knuckle-draggers in the opposing fans’ section as “gypsies”. > [@roger](#): > > Are you saying that home fans never do this? I don’t understand why supporters should only do this when they’re on the road. Sounds bizarre. > [@Nametag](#): > > I think he’s implying that fans don’t heckle members of their own team. > [@ruadh](#): > > _She_. But yes, that’s what I meant. It was the use of the word “section” that confused me. The mental picture created was of the travelling band of Away supporters shouting abuse from their enclosure. I didn’t parse it as being synonymous with “denigrated by opposition fans”. Are there many Eastern Europeans plying their trade in Ireland? ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/27 "2004-11-25T02:03:04Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > This is making me hungry. > > Let me explain… > In Germany, they had a specialty at the local swimming pool _Imbiss_ (a general term for a little fast food stand or restaurant) called _Pommes Frites mit Zigeuner Sosse_ (French Fries with Gypsy sauce). Basically the Gypsy sauce was a sweetish tomato based sauce with chunks of peppers and onions and heavy on the paprika. Mmmmm…it was good. Which makes me think…maybe Roma had been so central to Hungary for so many hundreds of years and had adopted the Hungarian language and Hungarian customs and Hungarian culinary traditions that they just became synonymous with Hungarian and vice versa, as these travelers were often the only representatives of Hungary that some other nationality might commonly come into contact with. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/28 "2004-11-25T07:21:56Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > Are there many Eastern Europeans plying their trade in Ireland? No, but Ireland has faced a number of Eastern European teams in World Cup or European Championship qualifying. It has also happened in Scotland to Celtic’s Eastern European players (and, I imagine, to those playing for other SPL teams). ---
**Author:** ![HanoNymus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ee59a6/32.png) [@HanoNymus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HanoNymus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/29 "2004-11-25T15:32:42Z")
Hungarian by no means equals Gypsy. Most Hungarians would be insulted to be called Gypsies. > [@Guinastasia](#): > > Could it be that some Hungarians tend to be the dark, swarthy types? My grandfather, for instance, was half-Magyar (his father was born in Hungary), and some of his friends and relatives used to tease him about being a gypsy. That’s just a coincidence. The reason for the association of Hungarians with Gypsies is pretty much what devilsknew said: > [@devilsknew](#): > > maybe Roma had been so central to Hungary for so many hundreds of years and had adopted the Hungarian language and Hungarian customs and Hungarian culinary traditions that they just became synonymous with Hungarian and vice versa. The other association (Romales = Romanians) is also a coincidence: > [@spoke-](#): > > I thought Romania was supposed to be ground zero for the Roma. Isn’t that where the self-proclaimed “King of the Gypsies” resides? [Cite.](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-09/30/content_268765.htm) The names “Romanian” and “Romania” come from ancient Rome. “Romales” are called so because [the Narikuravas - Gypsies of south India - worship Rama and Sita.](http://www.indolink.com/Forum/Arts-Culture/messages/4582.html) The confusion is probably enhanced by the fact that [The country with the largest populations of Roma is Romania](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_%28people%29). One of the reasons for the spelling of Rroma with the double “r” is to avoid this confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/30 "2004-11-25T16:35:54Z")
**HanoNymus** is right that the similarity in Roma and Romanian is nothing but a coincidence. However, I’m skeptical of the explanation that they worship “Rama and Sita.” That looks more like someone’s stab at a guess than any actual documented etymology. The etymology for Romany in the _American Heritage Dictionary_ is that it comes from _rom_, the Romany word for ‘man, husband, Gypsy man’ - from Sanskrit _doma_ ‘man of a low caste’, from _domba_, a caste of hereditary drummers, from Dravidian, akin to the Telugu word _tamatama_ ‘drum’. (The Sanskrit and Telugu words are supposed to have dots under the letters d and t, but I can’t type dotted letters online.) Coincidentally, the Hungarian self-designation _Magyar_ comes from a Proto-Finno-Ugric word also meaning ‘man’. The same root that produced Finnish _mies_ ‘man’ and the self-designation of the Mansi people in Siberia. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/31 "2004-11-25T19:57:16Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > The etymology for Romany in the _American Heritage Dictionary_ is that it comes from _rom_, the Romany word for ‘man, husband, Gypsy man’ - from Sanskrit _doma_ ‘man of a low caste’, from _domba_, a caste of hereditary drummers, from Dravidian, akin to the Telugu word _tamatama_ ‘drum’. (The Sanskrit and Telugu words are supposed to have dots under the letters d and t, but I can’t type dotted letters online. Hancock on the subject of the etymology of Rom(a): > [@](#): > > The view that the ancestors of the Romanies emerged from the lees of Indian society was initiated by Grellmann and began to spread after 1841, when a man named Hermann Brockhaus suggested in a letter to Pott dated 16 July 1841, that the word Rrom had its origin in the Indian word om (reproduced in Pott, 1844:i: 42) and translated here: > > In the collection of fairy tales of the Somadeva edited by myself, we find Tar.3 çl. 96 (page 169), and in Khlana’s History of Kashmir, e.g. V. 353, the word Dòmba (with retroflex d), and Wilson makes at this point the comment that this name indicates a kind of pariah. Since this word is missing from the Sanskrit dictionaries, and thus is not considered to be classical by Indian grammarians, it must therefore belong to the words borrowed from the colloquial vernaculars. In Hindi, we actually find the word d’oma, feminine d’omni, with which a person of the lowest class is labelled. Might not this word dom be the same as the Gypsy Rom? Doesn’t this perhaps refer to a tribe originally living in north-western India which, being subjugated, were degraded to the status of pariahs? The fact that a people don’t call themselves by a name indicating something dishonorable is obvious; only through subjugation can the name of a people become a name of opprobrium among the victors. > > om refers to a class of people which the dictionary describes as > > . . . a very low caste, representing some old aboriginal race, spread all over India. They perform such offices as carrying dead bodies, removing carrion, and so on. > > ``` > Sinclair, in his discussion of the etymology of the word, described the om less charitably as “the very dregs of impurity, the Helots of all, shameless vagrants, eaters of carrion, beggars and thieves” (1909:40). > > Very quickly, this origin became the conventional wisdom in Romani Studies, and is repeated even today without qualification. While on phonological grounds a case might be made for the word Rrom being derived from om (< Skt @IMa(z)a-, om(b)a-, Hi om), its semantics have been challenged by Kenrick (1995:37), who maintains that it meant simply “man,” or “our people” rather than “others,” and at the time of the exodus from India did not have Brockhaus’ later interpretation. Leitner (1877:i:6) has also shown that in some Dardic languages, the words rÇm and r4m mean simply “race of people;” in Khowar it means a “flock” (Sloan, 1981:128), while Mookerji (1927:66) says that in Bihari, “the epithet for a gentleman is ‘Rouma’ (ÐÞ‡ÅÞ), a contraction of the Sanskrit ‘Romya’ (the beautiful).” In addition, and given that if Indic its most likely Sanskrit etymology would be Çmba, which derives from a word meaning ‘drum’ (and thus “drummer”—see Turner, 1966:313), the first suggested meaning of, inter alia “musician,” cannot be entirely discounted; drummers in particular featured among the camp followers accompanying the R~jpãts, and Briggs (1953:79), also discussing this as an origin for the word, writes of the Cha~las (i.e. Domba) in K~ѧ being required to “beat the drum before they entered the town to make higher-j~ti people aware of their staining presence.” > > ``` > > This etymology for Rrom has been questioned however, Brockhaus’ om being rejected in favor of Sanskrit UÞÞPÞ r~ma, “husband,” the most likely of several interpretations of this word since this is also its meaning in Romani (Rishi, 1976a). Borrow had already considered this etymology in his Lavo-Lil a century before (1874:56). It is also entirely possible that the name is not Indian at all, but was acquired at the time of the formation of the people themselves, in the Sultanate of Rum (1071-1097), whose inhabitants were called C@:"Ä$@4 (Romaivi) and Romiti by the Byzantine Greeks. A source in this name was first put forward by Sinclair (1909). Persian and Arab writers referred to Byzantia as Rãm and it appears in the writings of Firdausi in the Sh~h N~meh, though not as a reference to its people. From [here.](http://radoc.net:8088/RADOC-41-ROMGADJO.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/32 "2004-11-25T20:37:20Z")
I should also add, for those interested in such things, that the following is a very good piece on the latest thoughts about the origins of the Romani people: [ON ROMANI ORIGINS AND IDENTITY: QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION](http://radoc.net:8088/RADOC-1-NEWTHOUGHTS.htm) That, and the previous link, are from [The Romani Archives and Documentation Center](http://http://radoc.net:8088/) - a website that all the cool kids visit regularly, don’t ya know. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/33 "2004-11-25T20:47:30Z")
> [@HanoNymus](#): > > The names “Romanian” and “Romania” come from ancient Rome. Yes, I know. I didn’t say otherwise. And that has naught to do with my impression that Romania (not Hungary) is the European “homeland” for the Roma. As you note yourself, Romania has the largest poulation of Roma in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/34 "2004-11-25T21:28:01Z")
My apologies. That last post shouldn’t have been so defensive/snippy. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2004, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/35 "2004-11-25T23:56:49Z")
On TV, when I was a kid, there were lots of sitcoms with occasional scenes in Hungarian restaurants and these invariably had a Gypsy violinist sawing out a _chardasch._ I know the cliche the OP refers to, but don’t think it retains a lot of currency these days. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2004, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395/36 "2004-11-26T05:51:21Z")
**Kal** , the web page you linked to by Hancock got the special characters for Sanskrit and Hindi hopelessly garbled. It takes a lot of guesswork to even guess what words he’s citing. The D in _Dom_ was omitted so that the word looks like “om.” \ Unicode still has a long way to go, it seems. Hancock quotes a way outdated 1841 statement the caste-name _Domba_ isn’t found in any Sanskrit dictionary. I looked up both _Doma_ and _Domba_ in the Monier-Williams _Sanskrit-English Dictionary_, on page 431, before posting the above etymology. Monier-Williams published his dictionary in 1899. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-hungarian-gypsy/276395.md?page=1)