Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3927
Risposta a Leonardo Piasere, 2019, Pour une histoire des auto-dénominations romanès, Anuac, 8, 1: 85-118.
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Yaron Matras
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Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
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Yaron Matras
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Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
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                                           2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 105-112




                                                                                    REJOINDERS

Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective
A reply to Leonardo Piasere

Yaron MATRAS
University of Manchester


Rejoinder to Leonardo PIASERE , Pour une histoire des auto-dénominations romanès, ANUAC,
Vol. 8, n° 1, giugno 2019: 85-118.



   An extraordinary feature of the relationship between Romani speaking
populations and the majority populations in most European regions is the
consistent distinction between Romani autonyms – the terms used by
Romani speaking populations to refer to themselves, and exonyms – terms
used by others to refer to Romani populations. Generally, Romani speaking
populations use one or more of the terms Rom, Sinte, Kale, Manuš or
Roma(ni)čel (or labels derived from them) as autonyms. In some regions,
they are used in addition to more specific group labels that reference either
historical occupations, or occupational patterns such as sedentary vs.
nomadic, or else co-territorial populations (such as Orthodox Slavs vs.
Muslims) or region of settlement. By contrast, majority populations tend to
refer to Romani speaking groups with labels derived either from the term
“Egyptian” (Gypsy, Yifti, Gitanos, etc.) or from the label Tsigan (in all
likelihood of Turkic etymology, see Matras 2015: 18-23). Historical exonyms
that are nowadays seldom in use include such terms as “Bohemians”,
“Tatars”, “Pharaons”, and more. This asymmetry between the etymological
sources of internal and external appellations might be considered to be
symbolic of the social distance between the populations and the disparity of


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Yaron Matras
Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 105-112.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3927
106                                                              YARON MATRAS


imagery and semiotic representations of practices and beliefs that communities
on either side of the divide each tend to associate with the other. This
terminological disparity is abandoned, however, once Romani populations
give up their ancestral community language, Romani, and shift to the
language of the majority population, in which case they tend to adopt the
exonym as autonym, as in the case of Gypsies in England and Gitanos in
Spain, though typically a unique term is still retained to refer to group-
outsiders (Gaujas, Payos, and so on). There is thus a tight link between the
contrast of labels and the contrast of languages, making the use of autonyms
an inherently sociolinguistic phenomenon.
   In a recent paper on the history of Romani self-appellations, Piasere
(2019) reviews historical sources going back to the sixteenth century that
name Romani population groups and document their language. Based on
these sources, he makes the case that the autonyms Rom, Sinte, Kale, Manuš
a n d Roma(ni)čel (and their respective phonetic variants) are part of an
established pool of self-appellations used by Romani-speaking populations,
and that in certain periods some of these names may have been used
interchangeably by individual groups.
   Piasere notes how in some descriptive discussions, both old and new,
there has been a tendency to associate names with particular groups and to
project present-day distributions back into history, suggesting that Romani
speaking populations have always constituted distinct “tribes” or “nations”,
each with its own self-appellation. Piasere shows how this view, and the
assumptions about nationhood or tribalism that underlie it, are inconsistent
with the reported facts. He proposes an alternative historical hypothesis
according to which Romani speaking populations had at their disposal a
variety of autonyms, which will have been volatile at times, lost and then
possibly re-acquired or substituted again by others from the same pool, in all
likelihood as an outcome of varying contacts among different population
groups. In this way, Piasere seeks to de-essentialise the idea of fixed Romani
“groups”, much in the same vein as Marushiakova & Popov’s (2004) seminal
paper on segmentation and consolidation of Romani populations, which had
argued against a fixed trajectory of Romani group demarcations and instead
in favour of constant, dynamic re-shaping of social boundaries and group
identity in response to new contacts and bonds between families and
communities.
   For the state of the art, Piasere, draws on linguistic works on group self-
appellations including Matras (1999b, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2010) and Bakker
(1999). The underlying assumption in Piasere’s contribution is that ethnic
autonyms are secondary derivations from lexical words (see also Matras

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2002: 26, 2004): rom “husband” and romni “wife” correspond to the name of
the language romanes, manuš is “person” and kale means “black”. Piasere’s
method is to map the mention of Romani ethnic autonyms by dated
historical records and location. The pattern that emerges shows the presence
of Kale primarily in western Europe, often overlapping with Romaničel, while
there are also attestations of both terms in the Balkans (the latter contradict
Bakker’s 1999 suggestion that Romaničel is a western or “northern”
innovation). The term Sinte is attested in central Europe, as is Manuš (in
France and Germany), while Rom as an ethnic autonym is attested primarily
in southeastern Europe (alongside group-specific sub-labels). The argument
is that the sources point to an overlap of various ethnic autonyms during the
same periods of time and in the same regions, on the one hand, while on the
other hand the same terms can be found at least sporadically all across
Europe and therefore they cannot be considered to have emerged in
particular regions, or be linked to particular populations. Moreover, an
example is cited from von Sowa’s notes on a Romani speaking community in
Westphalia documenting their use of alternate autonyms (kalo, romaničel,
a n d rom). Piasere concludes that the terms Rom, Sinte, Kale, Manuš and
Roma(ni)čel are all inherited terms that were used interchangeably as
autonyms by Romani speaking family networks, some being preferred during
certain historical periods, only then to be abandoned in favour of others.
This accounts for the co-occurrence of different self-appellations in the
same regions during the same period, and for the presence of the primarily
“western” labels Romačel and apparently also Kale as relic forms in the
Balkans (though for the latter Piasere relies on a somewhat spurious, single
mention on the website of the Christian missionary organisation Dom
Research Centre).
    Much of this is well in line with my own conclusions in earlier work, as
alluded to above (Matras 2002, 2004, 2010). I take issue, however, with the
inclusion of Sinte in this pool of reconstructed shared labels. Before I return
to this issue, I will add just a few more remarks on observations and
methodological considerations. First, as Piasere remarks in passing, there is
a certain semantic hierarchy of labels, whereby Roma(ni)čel is only attested
as an ethnic autonym, while rom, kale and manuš also have other, lexical
meanings (“husband”, “black”, “person”). The same applies to Sinte, which
equally lacks lexical meaning. Indeed, those communities that are known to
use Sinte as self-appellation invariably uses rom/romni for “husband/wife”.
Some labels are thus more intrinsically compatible with others, as their
meanings can be complementary, while others are more prone to compete
with alternative autonyms. Second, some of the labels are widely attested in
combination with attributes that form localised autonyms such as dasikane

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108                                                                 YARON MATRAS


rom “Slavic/Christian Orthodox Rom” (in the Balkans), polska roma “Polish
Roma”, gadškene sinte “German Sinte” (lit. “Sinte who live among the Gaje”).
This type of formation, however, is not attested, to my knowledge, for either
roma(ni)čel or kale.
   Third, it is important to note that the ubiquitous term rom has its origin in
the Indian caste denomination label ḍom with its cognates in the names of
peripatetic populations of Indian origin living outside of India such as dom
and lom (Matras 2002: 14-18). Without a doubt, it is the caste-like social
structure of Romani communities, where family networks historically
specialise in a particular pool of mobile trades, that prompts both the
retention of in-group autonyms, and the renewal of autonyms to express
trade, mobility and status. In this way, the volatility of autonyms is intrinsic,
providing the motivation in the first place for the kind of processes that
Piasere reconstructs. This also offers an explanation for the geographical
distribution of labels. In the West, the widespread retention of autonyms of
pre-European etymology – Roma(ni)čel, Kale, and Manuš – can be linked to
the rather conservative patterns of nomadism and, within language, to
strategies of lexical camouflage (see Matras 1999a); this contrasts with
Bakker’s (1999) hypothesis that these are shared innovations. In the
Southeast, emerging trade specialisations and mobility status are captured
in the adoption of trade- and status- based labels that draw on loans from
the surrounding contact languages Turkish, Romanian, and Hungarian, such
as Yerli “settled”, Sepetči “basket-weavers”, Lingurari “spoon-makers”, Lovari
“horse-dealers”, and so on.
   Fourth, while the frame of this discussion is the permanent dichotomy
between in-group self-appellations and external labels as used by majority
sedentary populations, we have at least two examples, both from Germany,
of the interchangeability of autonym and exonym among co-territorial
peripatetic communities: The Jenisch population of (non-Romani)
peripatetics in southern Germany refer to Romani speakers (whose
contemporary autonym is Sinte) as Manisch , from Manuš (Matras 1998),
while in other parts of the country the same term is used as an autonym by
groups of peripatetics who are not Romani speakers (see Lerch 1976).
Conversely, Sinte (Zinte) is attested in an eighteenth century source from
southern Germany as an exonym used by Jenisch Travellers to refer to
Romani speakers whose self-appellation is documented in the same source
as Kale (Matras 1999b). This provides further proof of the volatility of labels.
   Finally, the assumption that group name is a stable feature of particular
Romani communities presupposes the existence of criteria to be able to
identify communities and their consistent composition over time. But


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ROMANI SELF-APPELLATIONS IN A LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE                                  109


historical sources do not usually allow us to trace either the spatial
movements or the ethnographic characteristics of family networks over time.
At best, we can attempt to link self-appellations with dialect features, that
is, structural features of lexicon, morphology, and lexico-phonology,
provided that the sources offer samples of speech or lexical lists which we
can compare with present-day data from the same regions. When these are
examined, they do not offer any insights into a correlation between group
label and dialect. Instead, dialect features are consistent for individual
regions (and for recent migrant groups, with their region of origin)
regardless of group label. Thus, the structural features that are documented
for Kale and Romaničel in Finland are by and large fully compatible, as are
those (Para-Romani) features documented for the Ca l é a n d Errumantxel
populations of the Iberian Peninsula. Conversely, the speech of the Romacil
of northwestern Greece is consistent with the features of Romani as found in
that region among neighbouring Romani groups such as the Arli and has
nothing distinctive in common with the dialects associated with populations
labeled Romaničel in western Europe. This too supports the theory of an
inherited, pre-European pool or etymological sources of self-appellations,
one that pre-dated the formation of regional dialects of Romani in Europe.
   The exception to the latter pattern is the label Sinte. Unlike the other
autonyms, Sinte is a predictable indicator of linguistic-structural dialect
features. These include structural innovations such as use of the negative
indefinite kek, predominance of formations in -h in intervocalic positions,
the copula and interrogatives, initial jotation in j, prevalence of loan verb
adaptation in av/er, shift to initial word stress and syllable reduction, and the
extensive impact of German on vocabulary, among others. The self-
appellation Sinte is thus linked inherently with a particular pattern of
language internal structural innovations, with the historical impact of the
German language, as well as an origin in a distinct Romani speaking
population that had consolidated itself in the German regions. This applies
to populations of neighbouring territories in the Low Countries, Austria,
Poland, Bohemia, and northern Italy as well as to Romani speaking
communities that accompanied German settlers in Russia, Hungary, Serbia
and Romania. The label Sinte is not found among any Romani speaking
populations that do not show a historical connection to Germany, or whose
dialect fails to show the pool of structural features alluded to above.
   In my article on Rüdiger and eighteenth century German scholarship on
Romani (Matras 1999b) I argued that the term Sinte was originally an
exonym that was borrowed into Romani from the speech of non-Romani
peripatetics, as it is first attested in such function in its earliest mention in

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110                                                                 YARON MATRAS


the so-called Sulz List of 1787. Its attestation as a ubiquitous self-
appellation of Romani speaking communities in Germany is not found until
later, well into the nineteenth century, coinciding with the gradual
disappearance of the label Kale. That this represents a shift in autonyms
rather than a replacement of one population by another is suggested by the
nature of the dialect material, which remains consistent in the earlier,
eighteenth century sources, where the label is Kale, and the later sources,
where the autonym is Sinte. Piasere (2019: 110) contends that the
chronology is not convincing, since Italian Sinte stories are documented
from the second half of the nineteenth century, having been recorded earlier
in that century. But the argument does not rely merely on the apparent
chronology.
   I had argued that Sinte could not have been part of the Early Romani pool
of names since it does not show a pre-European etymology. Piasere asks
(2019: 92) for clarification about my understanding of that early pool of
names, which I refer to as having pre-European etymology but post-
European diffusion (Matras 2004: 67). What I meant is that the terms are
etymologically pre-European, that is, they were part of the lexicon that was
inherited before contact with Byzantine Greek; but their use as ethnic
designations only emerged after arrival in Europe. Thus, kalo means “black”,
but may have only been adopted as a group name after the encounter with
(fairer-skinned) Europeans. Similarly, manuš means “person” but may have
only come to signify a community in Europe.
   More pertinent to the argument is the etymological status of Sinte. In
Matras (1999b) I pointed out that Sinte carries the inflectional characteristics
of a European loanword in Romani (see Matras 2002 for a comprehensive
discussion of inflectional loanword integration patterns into Romani).
Piasere (2019: 110) disputes this, but in doing so he misinterprets some of
the linguistic facts: He refers to the argument that the plural ending e is not
typical of inherited or pre-European words, and cites counter-examples such
as bale “pigs” and janre “eggs”. This fails to take into account the structure
of Romani nominal inflection classes. The word accent in Si n t o falls
invariably on the first syllable, thus /sínto/, identifying the word as a
European loan and its inflectional ending o as one borrowed from Greek
(“athematic” or “xenoclitic”), contrasting with the inherited masculine
singular ending o. Pre-European masculines in o that take a plural ending in
e invariably have a stressed inflectional ending: /baló, janró/. Admittedly,
stress often shifts to the first syllable in the Sinti and neighbouring dialects,
though this is a late phenomenon. Crucially, the inflection pattern of Sinto is
that of European loans: The oblique-dative is sintóske contrasting with

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baléske, and the feminine is Sínta or Síntica contrasting with the feminine
derivations in i or ni of inherited (pre-European) nouns that end in an
inflectional vowel. In the plural, the nominative formation is Sínturi, Sínti,
Sínte, and not *Sinté in line with the pattern balé, janré, and the oblique is
Sintón, not *Sintén in line with the pattern balén.
   So while I am in full agreement with Piasere on the core of his thesis, and
congratulate him for a coherent and lucid display of the argument and an
exhaustive survey of the sources, I would maintain that once the mapping of
names to regions and sources is supplemented by a mapping to linguistic
features, it becomes clear that Sinte – consistent with its structural
inflection patterns – is in fact not part of the shared pre-European pool of
terms, but one that entered the scene later, specifically into the Romani
dialects that emerged in Germany, probably in the eighteenth century. The
presence of the term among speakers of “German Romani” outside of
Germany, in such places like Italy, Serbia, or Romania, could in principle be
traceable to diffusion as a result of continuous family and social links
between the communities in Germany and the out-migrants (links that in
some cases continue to exist today) and so it is not necessarily indicative of
the chronology of the emergence of the term and its use to replace other
terms such as Kalo in Germany itself.
   This does not in any way weaken Piasere’s argument; on the contrary, it
strengthens it: The fact that a particular group in Germany was prone to
adopt an external appellation for itself, and that this appellation then spread
among groups that shared dialect features (and other customs and practice),
indicates the volatility of self-appellations, and thus stands contrary to the
assumption of historically stable, self-contained “nations” or “tribes”, just
like Piasere argues.




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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Yaron Matras
Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 105-112.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3927
