Gypsy (Roma) Culture: Customs, Traditions & Beliefs
By Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor | May 1, 2017 09:09pm ET
About 11 million people worldwide, according to the New York Times, and about a million in the United States, according to Time, belong to an ethnic group known as the Roma or Romani. They are more commonly called Gypsies or travelers.
The term Gypsy, considered to be mildly derogative, according to the Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption organization (FRUA), is a holdover from when it was thought these people came from Egypt. However, a study published in 2012 concluded that Romani populations have a high frequency of a particular Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA that are only found in populations from South Asia. It is now thought that the Roma people migrated to Europe from India about 1,500 years ago.
http://www.livescience.com/44512-gypsy-culture.html
