Romas and “Gypsy Crime” as Technical Terms

Abstract

The origin of the Roma people seems to be one of the mysteries of history. The Roma people have neither legends nor tales in regard to their origin or their wandering for from Asia to Europe. Language history research has shown that the Romani language took shape in the 1st millennium BCE in the north-western part of India. Its speakers wandered away and in the 6th–7th centuries CE they were in Persia and Armenia, in the 11th century in the Balkan territories of the Byzantine Empire finally arriving in Hungary in the early years of the 15th century. Part of them remained here, while many others wandered on to western and northern parts of Europe. While doing so they became infamous as vagabonds, swindlers and thieves, and finally they were driven out of many areas. The paper also intends to give an overview of the Roma history in Hungary, the Roma-Hungarian relations and to deal with the problem of the so called ”Gipsy Crime”.