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Gypsy (sometimes spelled Gipsy) is a word used to name, as a blanket term, various unrelated ethnic groups or persons fitting the Gypsy stereotypes.

Origin

The word derives from the word for "Egyptian" in Latin, the same as the Spanish Gitano or the French Gitan. It emerged in Europe, in the 15th century, after the immigration of the Romani people in that continent.^[1] They received this name from the local people either because they spread in Europe from an area named Little Egypt, in Southern Balkans or because they resembled the European imagery of Egyptians as dark-skinned people skilled in witchcraft (in fact they arrived from Northern India). During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was written in various ways: Egipcian, Egypcian, 'gipcian, 'gypcian^[2]. As the time elapsed, the notion of Gypsy evolved including other stereotypes, like nomadism, exoticism.^[3]

Contemporary use

In time, the use of the term Gypsy was extended to other ethnic groups, perceived as fitting its stereotypes, like nomadic people of European (Irish Travellers, Yeniche, Quinquilleros) or South Asian origin (Lyuli, Banjara, Kalbeliya), also various ethnic groups in South-East Asia, known as Sea Gypsies. Colloquially, it names also any person perceived as fitting the Gypsy stereotypes.^[4][5]

References

1. ↑ Hancock, Ian ''Romanies''
2. ↑ Hancock, Ian We are the Romani people, Univ. Hartfordshire Press, 2002
3. ↑ Hancock, Ian ''The ?Gypsy? stereotype and the sexualization of Romani women''
4. ↑ Hancock, Ian ''The struggle for the control of the identity''
5. ↑ Hancock, Ian ''The roots of Antigypsyisim: to the Holocaust and after''