The picture displays two Romani women demonstrating the Romanian government’s proposal to change the official name of the Romani people from “Romani”/”Roma”, which means “man” and is a word from the official language of the Romani people, to “Tigan”, which is a racist slur meaning the same as the slur “Gypsy”.
The government says the name change is necessary because of the possible confusion among the international community between the words “Romani”/”Roma”, which refers to the Romani ethnic minority and Romanian, which refers to the people from the European country Romania.
The Roma women display signs that read, in Romani chib and Romanian, “I am a Roma”.
Bucharest, Romania. November, 2010.
This is fucking awful.
Also, I think it’s important to note that “Tigan” doesn’t mean the same thing as “gypsy”.
They’re certainly racist slurs, but I think it’s commonly held opinion among Roma that “tigan”, “cigan”, “tzigan”, “zigeuner”, “zingari”, “chingene” and all other variants is a far worse slur. If someone calls me a gypsy, I’m certainly not happy, especially coming from gadje, but if someone calls me tzigan, that’s fighting words and Del knows that we’ll be taking it out into the street.
All of these words are derived from the Greek, “athinganoi”. This word basically means slave, untouchable, anti-social. It is a deeply vile slur, and honestly just reducing it to “gypsy” is wrong. Gypsy is obviously based on Egyptian which like… is frustrating, and inaccurate, and it’s certainly been used to single us out and used as a slur, but NOT in the same way as tzigan has been.
Otherwise, thanks for sharing. The Romanian government’s bullshit excuse of “it sounds too similar to Romanian” even though they didn’t call themselves that until the 19th century honestly gets my blood boiling. Also, our “R” sound is different than their “R” sound, me te merav.
^
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The Paradox Machine 