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Notes

1. Rrom (plural Rroma) is the term officially adopted by the International Romani Union to refer to all people of Romani descent, regardless of self-ascription. Where a Romani population has a different name for itself, the policy is to use that name, thus one Romani population in northern Europe refers to itself as Sinti, those in Spain, Finland and Wales as Kalé and so on.

Confusion arises because Vlax-speaking Rroma use the term only with reference to themselves, having other names for other Gypsy populations. The spelling used here, with double-rr, reflects the usage in the New Standard Orthography established by the Language Commission of the International Romani Union.

2. Vlax (Vlach) Rroma are those descended from the populations held in slavery on the Wallachian and Moldavian estates between the mid-l4th and mid-l9th centuries, tens of thousands of whom have subsequently left Romania for other parts of the world. The principal Vlax groups include the Kalderasha, the Churara, the Lovara and the Machvaya. Most Vlax Rroma in North and South America are Kalderasha.

3. The Romanichals are the Romani population in and from England. They are referred to as Gipsurja or Dzipsurja by Vlax Rroma. American Romanichals refer in turn to the Vlax Rroma disparagingly as "Turks" or "Ragheads."

4. The Bashalde are a Romani population originally from Hungary and Slovakia.

5. Romungre here refers to the new (post-1989) wave of non-Vlax, non-Romani-speaking Rroma from Hungary.

6. The Bayash (or Beyash or Boyash) are descendants of Vlax Rroma who, during the period of Balkan slavery, worked in the houses of the landowners and were forbidden to speak Romani, consequently losing that language. The ethnic language of the Bayash in America is Romanian, though it is everywhere giving way to English. Vlax Roma use the label to refer to various Gypsy populations who don't speak Romani.

7. A Slava is a saint's day feast, such as St. Anne's or St. George's.

8. The word porrajmos means, literally, the "devouring," i.e., of Romani lives. There have been several porrajmata during the European experience, such as that in 1721, when King Charles the Sixth of Germany ordered the extermination of Rroma everywhere, or in 1740, when all Rroma throughout Bohemia were to be hung by decree. The Baro Porrajmos or "Great Devouring" was the Holocaust when, according to the US: Holocaust Memorial Research Institute's former senior historian Dr. Sybil Milton, as many as one and a half million Romani victims had been murdered by 1945.

9. "The roots of Antigypsyism," in G.J. Colijn & Marcia Sachs Littell (eds.), Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 2lst Century. University Press of America, Lanham, 1997, pp. 19-49.

10. Diane Tong, in personal communication.

11. József Vekerdi, "The Gypsies and the Gypsy problem in Hungary," Hungarian Studies Review, 15(2):13-26, 1988.

12. Romnet is an internet e-mail list of between 150 and 200 individuals from all parts of the world, and is a forum for the exchange of ideas and information. For further details see <http://www.rroma.com>.

13. Joan Nagle (ed.), American Indian Ethnic Revival: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. The University Press, Oxford, 1996.

14. Susan Lepselter; "The poetics of folklore discourse," Roma, 44/45:39-51 (1996).

15. Op. cit., pp. 40 and 51.

16. Claus Schreiner, in the introduction to his Flamenco: Gypsy Dance and Music from Andalusia. Amadeus Press, Portland, 1990, p. 32. The original German edition appeared in 1985.

17. Alexander Paspati, Etudes sur les Tchinghianés ou Bohémiens de l'Empire Ottoman. Karoméla, Constantinople, 1870, pp. 28-29.

18. Doris Duncan, "The rocky Romany road," Quinto Lingo, December, 1969, pp. 42-43.

19. W. Ivanow, "On the language of the Gypsies of Qainat," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal n.s., 10(11):439-455, p. 444.

20. Mort Rosenblum, "The Gypsy problem grows: East Europeans can't control Gypsies," The San Antonio Express, March 25th, 1984, p. 1-C. The title of this article is revealing.

21. Martin Croghan, "The brogue: Language as political culture," in J. Harris, D. Little & D. Singleton, eds., Perspectives on the English Language in Ireland. Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, 1986; pp. 259-269.

22. Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Jonathan Cape, London, 1984.

23. Viz Comics, The John Brown Publishing Co., Ltd., London. The comic strip ran in 1990.

24. The U.S. Playing Card Co., Cincinnati, Ohio.

25. Wells was in fact a proponent of the idea that "Iives unworthy of life" should be eradicated, which was a policy fundamental to Nazi race theory,

26. See Ian Hancock, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution. Karoma Publishers, Ann Arbor, 1987.

27. See Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Porrajmos; The Romani Holocaust," in Alan S. Rosenbaum, (ed.), Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Westview Press, Boulder, 1996, pp. 39-64.

28. Donald Kenrick; Les Tsiganes de I'Inde á la Méditerranée. Collection Interface, Toulouse, 1995, on page 37. The contemporary interpretation of dom is different from its meaning a millennium ago, when it simply meant "person."

29. This group, functioning within the framework of the International Conference on Romani Linguistics, will present its findings in subsequent volumes of the papers there presented, published by John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia.

30. A more detailed discussion of this historical-linguistic investigation is found in the introductory chapter of Ian Hancock, A Handbook of Vlax Romani, Slavica Publishers, Columbus, 1995,

31. Op. cit., page 47.

32. Andrzej Mirga and Nicolae Gheorghe, The Roma in the Twenty-First Century: A Policy Paper. Project on Ethnic Relations Monograph; Princeton, May, 1977, p. 22,

33. Michael Stewart, Time of the Gypsies. Westview Press, Boulder, 1997, p. 28.

34. Gregory Kwiek, Gypsies: The Unknown Nation. Unpublished manuscript, New York, 1997, pp. 92-93.

35. This has been a major criticism of Isabel Fonseca's Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey, Random House, New York, 1995:

36. Ralph Sandland, "The real, the simulacrum, and the construction of 'gypsy' in law," Journal of Law and Society, 23(3):383-405 (1996), p. 386.

37. Werner Cohn, The Gypsies. Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1973, p. 65.

38. Judith Okely, The Traveller-Gypsies. The University Press, Cambridge, 1983.

39. Wim Willems, Op Zoek Naar de Ware Zigeuner: Zigeuners als Studieobject Tijdens de Verlichting, de Romantiek en het Nazisme ("In search of the true Gypsy: Gypsies as Objects of Study from the Enlightenment and the Romantic Period to the Nazis"). Van Arkel Uitgeverij, Utrecht, 1995.

40. "Some political consequences of theories of Gypsy ethnicity," in A. James, A. Hockley & A. Dawson, eds., After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxís in Contemporary Anthropology. Routledge, London, 1977, pp. 224-243.

41. "Ethnic identity and place of origin: The Traveller-Gypsies in Britain," in H. Vermeulen & J. Boissevain, eds., Ethnic Challenge: The Politics of Ethnicity in Europe. Herodot, Gőttingen, 1984.

42. "Could there be a Rotwelsch origin far the Romani lexicon?", paper submitted to the Third International Conference on Romani Linguistics, Prague, Winter 1997, and to appear in the Proceedings. pp. 2-16.

43. Sandland, op. cit., pp. 386-7.

44. Jim Heintz, "Sweden regrets its eugenic past," The Guardian, August 26th, 1997, p.3.

45. Loc. cit.

46. See also Marek Kohn, "Are 'Gypsies' black?", The Jewish Quarterly, Summer, 1996; pp. 21-23.

47. Loc. cit.

48. This can be compared with an estimated non-African representation of 30% in the African-American gene pool.

49. Op. cit., p. 399.

50. Angus Fraser, The Gypsies. Blackwell: Oxford, 1992, p. 24.

51. Eric Williams, British Historians and the West Indies. André Deutch: London, 1966, p. 49.

52. Richard Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland The Influence of Stereotypes on Colonial Policy. Institute for the Study of Human Issues: Philadelphia; 1976, p. 40.

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