I was looking up the name Egyptian, as applied to Romani travellers, and came across some recent research that set my off on a bit of a chase.

Egyptian and its derivative, gypsy, are seen by many Romani as insulting terms. My friend Anna, who is proud of her Rom heritage, tells me it is an outsider’s name, based on a false myth, and used to ‘other’ the Rom people from the time they spread through Europe in the early modern era.

Scientists have assumed India as the Romani place of origin for a while, based on language and a brief look at genetic patterns. In a new study of thirteen different groups from different parts of Europe, full genome sequencing has confirmed the assumption, and told us more.

The original population left northwestern India some 1,500 years ago, moving to the Balkans. They left in a single group from a place in what is today Punjab, and travelled through Central Asian and the middle East, losing close to half their number, and finally settling in what is now Bulgaria. There they stayed, until the early twelfth century, when they were on the move again, this time out into Europe in several directions. They reached Spain in the 15th century and England in the 16th.

The study also found that, while Western genes have entered Romani blood lines wherever the travellers have moved (in fact, they have more European genes than South Asian), such mixing with local populations has happened more in some places, and in some times, than others. The chart below is taken from the research paper, and shows particular shared gene sequences by place of origin and length– a) for Europe and b) for South Asia.

https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-017-0547-x#Fig7

Of course, I then had to look for the story. They left India as the late classical period ended in a series of wars and invasions. They began to leave the Balkans when the Byzantine Empire took over Bulgaria, during a century of disruption and chaos. They reached Spain and Northern Europe at about the time that the Ottomans took over from the Byzantines. So many stories, waiting to be told!