Another Dracula Daily related post.
In the novel Dracula, the count has minions who are a racist caricature of people of the Rromani ethnicity. Stoker uses a variety of terms in the text, and as a person of Romanian ethnicity, I would like to clear up some possible places of confusion.
The most commonly known word in the English speaking world that Stoker uses for Rromani people is Gypsy. This is an English word ultimately descended from the word Egyptian, based on a misunderstanding by medieval European Christians that the itinerant Rroma were nomadic Egyptians, based on an interpretation of the Bible that the ancient Egyptians were scattered by God. This is incorrect, and most historical, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence suggests that the Rroma originated in northern India, which might have been obvious if medieval Europeans talked to any of them, or knew anything about India. Most Rroma today consider Gypsy to be a slur, although some do not - this is (ironically) similar to the attitude about the word Indian by indigenous peoples of the Americas. Among social justice activists, both words are regarded as slurs and faux pas, and at the bare minimum both are inaccurate. So, if you are still using that word in 2022, and you are not a Rromani person, knock it off.
Stoker, however, also uses the word Romany in his text, which is just his spelling for Rromani, because by the 19th century it was known in English that “Romany” was the endonym (the word a people use for themselves) as opposed to the exonym (the word a people use for others). If you’re a descendant of settlers and live in North America and you find yourself often confused by the “changing” names of Indigenous groups, its usually because – as is the case here – the exonym for that group was a slur, and got adopted into English simply because settlers encountered that group’s enemies before encountering the group itself.
The word “Rrom” means “man” in the Rromani language. “Rromni” means woman, “Rroma” is plural. “Rromani” is a female adjective, “Rromano” is a male adjective.
Now, where we can really get into some misunderstandings in the context of Dracula is with the term Romanian, which Stoker often spells Roumanian. Rromani =/= Romanian. Romanians are people from the country Romania, of which Transylvania is a part, as well as Wallachia and part of Moldavia and Bukovina. Stoker’s Castle Dracula is located in Romania. Galatz is in Romania, and is called Galați in Romanian. The words Romania, Romanian, etc. have nothing to do with the words Rroma, Rromani, etc. The name of the country of Romania comes from a belief on the part of the Romanian people that they are historically descended from a province of the Roman Empire once called Dacia. The greatest piece of this evidence is that Romanian is a Romance language, which is to say a language descended from the language of the Romans, Latin. Despite being surrounded by nations speaking Slavic tongues, Romanian is closer to Italian than it is to Ukrainian, despite cross-pollination over the years. The reason I use a double-r (representing a trilled r) in my spelling of Rroma for the nomadic ethnic group is for disambiguation purposes, because in the Romanian language the word for Romanian people is Români. The double-r spelling is also used within Romania for this reason.
Historically Romania has always had a relatively high population of Rroma, and historically speaking they have I think it is fair to say almost never been treated well. Today Rroma are the second largest ethnic minority in Romania behind Hungarians, but despite the similar names the Români have never treated Rromani people very well. From the time of their arrival in the region in the 1370s until the emancipations of the 1840s and 50s, Rromani people were enslaved within the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, and made serfs in Transylvania. In the 1940s there were genocidal programs carried out against them, and under the Communist regime there were attempts made to force Rroma to live in government built housing and abandon their traditional culture. Since the fall of the Communist government Rroma are extremely discriminated against in Romania, and it is mainstream there to be racist against them.
Which brings us to Szgany, which can be a confusing word in Dracula until you know that the Romanian language didn’t have standardized orthography until 1881. Basically the only place you’ll see the word Szgany today is in Dracula or in modern gothic horror fiction copying Dracula without thinking and treating “Szgany” as just the word for Dracula’s servants or something. In the novel, Stoker uses it as if it referred to a specific group of Rromani people, ones native to the area around Castle Dracula, in the Călimani Mountains.
However, Szgany is really just a phonetic transliteration of the Romanian word Țigani, which is just the Romanian word for “Gypsy”. The letter Ț in Romanian indicates a kind of “tz” sound, like in the word “pizza”. It is also found in Vlad Drăculea’s epithet – Țepeș means “the Impaler”, and is pronounced like “Tze-pesh”. So Țigani sounds like Szgany, and is also similar to the word for “Gypsies” in many other languages: Zingari in Italian, Çingene in Turkish, Cigány in Hungarian, Tsingánoi in Greek, etc. These are all still slurs, and descend from the word Atsínganos from the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire, which means “untouchable.” Țigani is still a commonly used word in Romania, partially due to the racism and partially due to the desire on the part of Români to avoid association with Rromani. There is a feeling in Romanian that the word Rromani gives Romanians abroad a “bad name” due to racism against Rromani people in many parts of the world. This is all, of course, absolutely terrible.
So, to summarize:
Gypsy = at best inaccurate, at worst a slur
Romany = 19th century English for Rromani, often spelt today as Romani, a common acceptable name for a diverse group of nomadic peoples ultimately descended from northern India
Roumanian = Romanian, a person from Romania
Szgany = Stoker’s attempt at spelling Țigani, a Romanian language slur for Rromani people.
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