While gypsy is a generic term used to refer to wandering tribes that contain many ethnicities within themselves, travelers happen to be nomadic people belonging to Ireland and Scotland. Gypsies are believed to have arrived in Europe from Indian subcontinent in the 16th century.
Gypsies have a shared culture, language and belief system as do Irish Travellers and Scottish Travellers; the groups may be referred to as Travellers. They are recognised as separate ethnic minority groups under equality legislation.
Irish Travellers are sometimes mistakenly called gypsies. They have no genetic relation with the Roma people. In Ireland Travellers were also commonly known as tinkers, derived from the sound their tools made hitting metal when many Travellers worked as tinsmiths.
The term Gypsy comes from “Egyptian” which is what the settled population perceived them to be because of their dark complexion. In reality, linguistic analysis of the Romani language proves that Romany Gypsies, like the European Roma, originally came from Northern India, probably around the 12th century.
However there are many instances of UK Gypsies who do not like to be known as Gypsies because of the negative connotations and prefer to be known as Travellers.
The RTFHS website includes lists of surnames that frequently occur in the Gypsy and Traveller community. Gypsy surnames which occur in Surrey include Cooper, Matthews, Ayres, Smith, Green, Taylor, Williams, Brazil, Shepherd, Beaney, Chapman and Scott among others.
Some of the better known areas of work that Gypsies and Travellers are involved in include seasonal agricultural work, motor trading and tree-felling. Some are employed as academics, teachers and public servants and in this way they add to the local economy.
Irish Travellers refer to themselves as Pavees, Minkiers or in Irish 'an lucht siúil' meaning 'the walking people'.
“Roma” is the word (ethnonym) that the Roma use to describe themselves: it is the term for the members of that specific people and it is Romani for “man”. “Gypsy” is a derogatory, disparaging term – for many an insult — used by the majority population to define the Roma people.
Common Gypsy names
You may have Romani, Traveller or Gypsy ancestry if your family tree includes common Romani or Gypsy surnames such as Boss, Boswell, Buckland, Chilcott, Codona, Cooper, Doe, Lee, Gray (or Grey), Harrison, Hearn, Heron, Hodgkins, Holland, Lee, Lovell, Loveridge, Scamp, Smith, Wood and Young.
They have Irish surnames – Ward, Connors, Carty, O'Brien, Cash, Coffey, Furey, MacDonagh, Mohan. In recent times, some have moved into the settled community; the town of Rathkeale in Co Limerick, population about 2000, has about 45% Travellers.
Romani, the common language of the Roma, the Sinti, the Kale and other European popula- tion groups summarised by the pejorative denomination gypsies, belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family and is the only New-Indo-Aryan language spo- ken exclusively outside of the Indian subcontinent.
Pikey is actually a word discribing non-Gypsy (as in non-Romani) travellers. Romani gypsies have called non-Romani travellers as pikies for years. "Often they would often say they're not gypsy they're pikies" when refering to non-Romani travellers of the UK.
Pikey's most common contemporary use is not as a term for the Romani ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around with no fixed abode. Among English Romani Gypsies the term pikey refers to a Traveller who is not of Romani descent.
majority of Travellers are Roman Catholic and they tend to be devout in religious observance. The community retain beliefs about cures to be found in various natural phenomena, discussed below.
Here is the Peaky Blinders Gypsy debacle explained. Tommy Shelby and his kin are Irish-Romani (sometimes spelled Romany) Gypsies, a unique cultural and ethnic group present in Britain since the 1500s. The award-winning Peaky Blinders is directed by Steven Knight and has run for 6 seasons, the most recent hitting U.S.
Irish Travellers fiercely preserve their cultural traditions, which includes their distinctive fashion choices. By dressing provocatively, they ensure that their cultural identity remains visible and intact. This act of self-expression allows them to keep their traditions alive and pass them on to future generations.
They found that Travellers are of Irish ancestral origin but have significant differences in their genetic make-up compared with the settled community. These differences have arisen because of hundreds of years of isolation combined with a decreasing Traveller population, the researchers say.
To earn a living today, gypsies might weave furniture, make bricks, resell clothing and goods, or trade horses, but employment is typically a side note in their existence. Sources repeatedly underscore the difficulty that the Roma have in obtaining regular work because employers often don't want to hire them.
Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with, and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity. Most Eastern European Roma are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.
All Gypsies and Travellers living on a local authority or privately owned sites pay council tax, rent, gas, electricity, and all other charges measured in the same way as other houses. Those living on unauthorised encampments, generally speaking, do not pay council tax, but they also do not generally receive services.
The Boswells (Bosville/Boss) are one of the largest and most well-known of all the British Romany Gypsy families.
Roma (Gypsies) in Prewar Europe. Many Roma View This Term in the Glossary traditionally worked as craftsmen and were blacksmiths, cobblers, tinsmiths, horse dealers, and toolmakers. Others were performers such as musicians, circus animal trainers, and dancers.
There is no king or queen. Traveller families often have someone that makes the main decisions that will affect the family as a whole, and is usually a patriarch or matriarch of the family. This is often the same for Romany people, who have no tradition of royalty.