Roma Religion. Charismatics Offering More Than Politics.

I.  Examine the facts; does Christianity, in some form; now enable the positive status of Roma; despite opposition of other 'Chriatians.'

What happens when a derided Christian community, Roma Orthodox, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, any branch, offer more in humanitarian results than those other Christians who brand them as inferior, not to be allowed autonomy, a permanent underclass..

Must Roma remain a permanent underclass?  Not if some branches of Christianity have a say, and they do. There remains a current strong following for Christianity among Roma, Romani, despite ongoing cultural rejections by traditional Western religions and groups who considered them less than truly Christian. And the numbers of the faithful are growing. Explore why, where. Start with a very Christian source, a moderate one, not automatically tilted evangelical, at Philip Jenkins' article, The church of the Roma, Christian Century, June 11, 2014/

• The focus of the Christian Century article is on this observations:
• That European Roma are "overwhelmingly Christian and becoming steadily more so."  
• That forms or Roma Christianity include the charismatic Christian groups, evangelicals, Pentecostals. 
• And this attraction is true despite historically profound persecution by 'mainstream' and 'deviant' European cultures, both; 
• Some 500,000 Roma were killed in the Holocaust, known as the porajmos, although precise numbers are reachable, given those simply killed and dumped into ravines and the like, before they even arrived as places like the extermination camps, where records were kept.  
• Others were sterilized, and numbers for all those out of the formal transport system, and who comprised the original larger population, are difficult to pinpoint, see http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Research/Proseminar/romaholocast.htm/  
• Rigid prejudices remain.  The scapegoat. 

II.  What is the practical, not necessarily spiritual, effect of Christianization through charismatic churches?

Why is this ongoing and increasing charismatic Christian participation important?

A. .  The attraction to charismatic Christianity is changing Roma culture in ways that their older adherence to orthodoxy did not.  The article notes that women enjoy greater emancipation, and education now. Participation in these Christian groups also teaches organizational and negotiation skills, as the groups proselytize, seek rights in their communities, train pastors to further the interests of the congregation. 

B.  Charismatic Christianity flourishing gives the lie to  those who say Roma are not Christian.  The Roma are doing for themselves better than other branches of charismatic Christianity did for them, is that so? Pentecostal Christianity offers skills experience.

III.  Why will traditional Western culture lost out to new approaches -- using Christian terminology..

A. Here is what the West does worst:  suspend judgment of a behavior until its cultural, linguistic, historical, personal surround is examined. And yet, the Common Law, underpinning the justice system of Western Cultures, traditionally applied maxims, or truths, of equity immediately after application of a law, to ensure that justice and not mere punitive retaliation resulted. See http://joyofequivocating.blogspot.com/search?q=maxims+of+equity

• Judging itself is morally precarious, as scholars of Jesus and some Christians would point out, see Matthew 7 at http://www.bartleby.com/108/40/7.html; but disregard of reasons for a behavior augments the evil, is that so.  
• When is the taking of a thing of value mere theft, to be punished mightily in the West; and when is it part of a cultural origin in a unity of give and take/ Does the perspective of the culture of the "offender", where sharing freely is the originator of the norm, and a taking where a needed thing is not shared, more acceptable than not.  Self-justifying? See  Romani law and culture, linguistic and behavioral angles

B.  With this huge disregard of basic justice and religious principles in the West, why would Roma continue to espouse Christianity?

Focus on sharing.

Try this:  Roma embody more Christianity than the Western usual Christians because their focus is on the sharing of all, the give and take, the sharing again.  See original linguistics:  to take, is not to steal necessarily, which is a random malicious gimme act.  To take is to show need, and self-help where someone will not share.  That is a general idea, now too far calcified in Western terms as thieves, but hatched in the Western crucible of Ayn Rand.  I have, I took, and I dare you to assert your need. Is that so?

Roma Music. Cultural updates - Start with Caravan of Thieves

Gypsy swing band.  Gypsy swing folk band is the full category, I understand.  One of my favorites among bands of that joy is Rattlesnake, a few years old but lasting, from band Caravan of Thieves -- visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwL6jdAkmSw

The more traditional music, see Romani music, Gypsy harps, group musicians,

Yenish Travellers. Blonde Angel as Celtic-Teutonic Yenish Traveller? Need Facts.

Blondes among the darker.

Why assume a crime?

Is the blonde angel Yenish? Maria and Greek Roma.

Update in light of comment, below. 

 As of 11/2/2013.  The child Maria's biological parents have been found in Bulgaria as the Greek Roma family who are raising her, had stated.  The identity is confirmed, and no crime appears to have been committed.  See http://abcnews.go.com/International/mystery-gypsy-girls-identity-confirmed-dna/story?id=20681522 . 

 In Ireland as well, no issue remains as to a blond child in a darker family there as well. See http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/world/europe/europe-mystery-girls/. 

Prejudices betray us, in the absence of facts.

1. An old issue now recurs. Alarms are raised about why darker skinned parents are raising a lighter-skinned child in their nomadic, or once-nomadic, Roma culture. Headlines:  the light-skinned child, the blond, blue-eyed one, might have been stolen. Take the child into protective custody, jail the parents! See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/21/greece-mystery-angel-girl-roma-gypsy/3142559/.

Might have been. The fever to feed a stereotype about racial hierarchy rules. No facts first, before painting the ending. The anti-minority mythology, the ancient libel about (once) Jews, and now Gypsies, grows.  Another such child has been found in a Roma family in Ireland, see http://world.time.com/2013/10/22/another-blonde-girl-removed-from-roma-family/   The Irish "Tinkers" are Travellers of, I understand, ethnic Irish background, see http://irishtraveller.org.uk/  And look Irish, not of Asian or other dark-skinned descent.  Still, smear.

Author Louise Doughty, with many books about Roma and Travellers, has risen to the current issue and called it, when it occurs as in the current fact-free zone, recurrent libel, see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/angel-kidnapped-by-gypsies-libel-replayed

2.  Roma or other nomadic groups are not alike. There are blondes like us. See an overview: Open Society Foundation, Voices, History of Gypsies, Roma, Travellers.  It has long been known that Travellers in the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe see themselves as separate from "Gypsy" or Roma groups also on the Continent.  Are the Travellers' origins Celtic, deep into Europe's own past, and not derivative from a migration from India.  Surnames can suggest a Romani past sometimes -- look at the Yenish, for example, in Ancestry.com.  Do a Romney and see the variations.

3.  Yenish, for example. Who are the fair-skinned nomadic peoples.  The Yenish Travellers, are among European nomadic peoples, even if now settled, and the Swiss response to them has been brutal.

3.1  Research.

Read academic papers on the topic, four submitted at the University of Greenwich, and one including specific mention of the tool of accusations of nomadic peoples' child abductions and state persecution responses against them generally (in Switzerland here) at  http://www.rae.ac.uk/submissions/ra1.aspx?id=58&type=hei&subid=1917, and all dating in the range of 2003,2004, 2005, 2006.

Find one such paper as a google book, The Role of the Romanies.  sections focusing on tales of child abduction and why they often seem to swirl about these wilfully maligned cultures, including the Yenish culture of Switzerland. for example, and other countries. , see Strike fear into hearts:  tell tales of child abduction, changelings, and target some group in need of, says the mainstream, control.

3.2.  Self-education.  The Yenish on film.  Listen.

Watch the Yenish in this Yenish film, so titled, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Z3X7yTiDQ; and another at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkqFB9S-Xok/.  Go down the right hand menu for more -- in America, anywhere.  I searched for Jeinesche Bond Letzebuerg, listed as the film's originator, and found nothing.   Here is a January 2012 long film, Die Letzen Freien Menschen, but in German, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td8chodhYsQ.  Music, haunting.

3.3  Read Louise Doughty.  Novels help normalize lives.  Try Fires in the Dark.

4.  Journalists.  Study your topic.

This issue of how nations deal with cultures within it is not de minimis, to be swept under traditionally boundaried countries' rugs.

The overall issue is ethical, humanitarian, right to autonomy. Is there such a human right to autonomy, to be able to move about instead of staking out turf?  With origins in various mists, and beset by urban legends that serve to rouse the settled against them, how do they defend.  Is there a right to assumed innocence? Of course not. And any group builds in survival techniques so they can survive.  Can those be defused? The cases do need to be vetted; but why remove a child if the home is safe, minimal adequate care even, and the parents cooperating in place?  The stereotypic assumption of guilt in a minority again is frightening.

There is more to nomadic cultures than the one category, Roma, Romani, embraces.  Stories recur in European and other history as children of the road, many now halted, caravan families often forced into alien molds of forced settlement. A broad brush paints them as darker skinned, dark hair.

 Get us some facts before arousing stereotypes.  Knee-jerk police-types. Unless there is harm being done or likely to be done to a child, and so long as a flight risk is not feasible (make it so), leave the child with the parents while you investigate calmly, quietly, and then perhaps tiptoe away while the child sleeps, unaware. 
..........................................................................

FN.    Associations:

Nomadic peoples in Scandinavia.  Are they there?

I did see begging people on our recent improvised road trip (Norway Road Ways), but have no information on ethnicity, or whether they were migrants as any others might be, just that they were dark-skinned.  I cannot discern clothing styles with any confidence.

Housing.  I saw only one trailer settlement in Norway this year on an improvised road trip.  Trailers, mobile homes, in groups, are not commonly visible from the roadside.Are they there? The people in that park were not dark, but I did wonder what purpose it served, construction going on, dirt road in parts, there hidden 'way up on the summit of a moderate mountain at Kvam, a place the sign called the Peer Gynt Trailer Park.  Peer Gynt country, of course.

Curiosity, speculation without facts:  Are these or were these residents nomadic once and is this a "settlement" by the governmenr?  Or is this just senior housing (then why so far away, up a winding road, up up. Is it benevolent low-income housing open to anyone.  The people I saw were fair-skinned.

• There are Gypsies in Norway, do a search. In Norwegian, they were called the Sigoynere.  In Sweden, the Zigenare.  One motivation -- to make money, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MILysXJHr1U/.  The narrators here appear to be of darker skin origin, not the Celtic-Teutonic who could blend in more easily physically. 
• And the cultural clashes are increasing, see http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/a-gypsy-fiasco-in-oslo/  Roma had, of course, been included in the racial purity slaughters of WWII and before and stigma after, see Long Pursuit of Racial Purity, http://mondediplo.com/1999/10/11/gypsy

Roma: NYT asks -- Are Roma Primitive or Poor? Start your letters.

This marks yet another recent news coverage event regarding Roma. Deportations from some parts of Europe to others -- Romania, Kosovo, wherever.  Now the New York Times looks at a base concept for many in Europe who question whether Roma can or should be assimilated into the culture of the country of present residence, or will they, or should they.  Ethical, humanitarian, ethnic identification issues all.  The Times phrases the issue this way:  Primitive, or just Poor?  Go immediately to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sunday-review/are-the-roma-primitive-or-just-poor.html?_r=0

Primitive?  Lesser beings?  Start your letters now.  This sounds like the old assessments of blacks in the United States -- are they "behind" because they are defective less evolved, or has our culture's keeping them in poverty by acts and omissions, made them an ongoing underclass, a poor class, undeserving of attention.

I am just returned with my son from an improvised car trip in Norway (our main site is Europe Road Ways for travel in Europe and other commentary).  Graphics are currently broken as I redo. Can you get it going?

Norway Roma.  In Norway I was aware of no Roma communities.  Please let me know what we missed.  We also saw no slums, but some individuals begging with Eastern European dress, usually women.  It is integrated racially in the industrial town areas by factories, and many, many black-other individual live throughout the country.  But Roma?  Please get back to me, in between your letters to the New York Times with your response.

Genome Roots: Roma from Northwest India

Roots, Branches. Genome Study Points to Roma Origins in Northern India 

Roots. Genome Study: Roma roots in Northwest India

These particular outgrowths are in Maine, but the concept carries: deep, unseen roots, wide branchings.

Consider again Roma roots. The similarity between Roma languages and languages in India is known. That suggests, of course, cultural origins. Now that connection has been buttressed as to a more precise location within India with a genome study by many contributors, see New York Times at Genomic Study Traces Roma to Northern India

Effect of outlawing nomadism. 

As you read the article, however, cringe at the treatment of the nomadic tradition of many Roma: "The marginalized group is still nomadic, often building illegal camps."  Illegal camps? Outlaw camp designation?

Make room for nomads. Why not make room for people to be nomadic in the first place, safe havens for encampments along the way, free of snide illegal-sniffing NYT reporters.  It is as though "illegal" -- once some law is passed -- ends the discussion of who has worth and who does not, whose practices have cohesive, deeply rewarding cultural roots, and which are not worth examining. 

Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered in National Socialismolocaust Memorial, Germany

Extermination of Roma, Zigeuner, Gypsies

Bring back the term "Gypsies" as Univerally Recognizable - Use with Respect

Roma photographed, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen KZ, Austria

Berlin.  High time. Finally, Germany acknowledges the hundreds of thousands of killed Romany -- Sinti and Roma -- in a new Holocaust Memorial.  See NYT at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/world/europe/memorial-to-romany-victims-of-holocaust-opens-in-berlin.html?_r=0.  Not all died in the killing camps, of course.  Many were killed in the woods, driven out, bodies in ravines. Jewish people came with written records of births, places; they could more easily be counted.

Crematorium, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria

National Socialism:  That sounds like a euphemism.  National? A harmless word.  Socialism?  Many benefits to that, applied carefully and not exclusively.  Put them together and the horror of the Nazis is not evoked at all.  This is 50-60 years later than the events, two to three generations-worth. It should be clear by now that no one-approach will work anywhere.  See variations in political systems explained at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/pl38/sect2.htm

For the most effective display of the history of Roma slaughter under the Nazis, go to Mauthausen, in Austria.

Memorial to Roma and Sinti at Mauthausen KC, Austria

Roma in Cathar country? Networks for Sustenance: France

In contrast to the wealth reported for some Romanian Roma in Buzescu, who call themselves not Roma but Gypsies or Tsigani, see National Geographic Magazine, September 2012, at 128ff, others could use whatever sustenance assistance for themselves and their animals as are consistent with autonomy and pride. 

Chateau Puivert, France. Cathar refuge.

In France recently, for example, we noted a family at the ticket booth of a known but run-down Cathar castle, Puivert, with living quarters behind.  A child, father in the booth collecting the Euro, then a woman walking up the hill, heavy-laden.  To an outsider's eye, the context would be consistent with Roma.  Small carts were nearby, and several thin horses sought some shade in the castle wall.

Horse for work and probably jousting exhibitions, Puivert Castle, France. Cathar.

Castle yard, Puivert Chateau.  Jousting exhibition course.

Jousting exhibition course, Chateau Puivert, France. Aude Department, Languedoc.

The heat was driving.  Few tourists were there, as the parking is a distance down the hill, but manageable. 

This chateau is overshadowed by the glitz and money at nearby Chalabre:  a commercial venture that we could not even enter because it did not open until noon.  But, from our research and walking around, there is little contemplative there, see http://www.easyvoyage.co.uk/france/chalabre-castle-4925.  Chalabre is a theme park in itself, activities, carefully winnowed education included in the tourist bits that glorify crusaders.  This goes on apparently without analysis of cause, means, issues of a military-political church, disconnected from the principles of its Founder, an institution killing off the opposition. The Albigensian Crusade was more and worse than another adventure in history, where some won, some lost. We all lost with the Albigensians, who were Christian, and fostered tolerance and egality.  Leave each to his or her own beliefs and practices, as we understand it.

 See Chalabre among other exploited Cathar castles at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoOs0IckkxM/.

Point here:  We found a family working to make a living, horses in need of more feed than they can find, a castle that offers more in authenticity and imagination than Chalabre. See Puivert at http://www.catharcastles.info/puivert.php?key=puivert.  How to focus assistance with dignity, if they want it.  Perhaps I misread.
 

Sara La Kali. Church of the Three Marys. Saintes Maries de la Mer. France.

The Three Marys.

The Church of the Three Marys.

Saintes Maries de la Mer, France.  The Camargue.

Sara La Kali, Saintes Maries de la Mer, Camargue, France. Crypt area.

Usually we take time to post photographs of our wonder-filled trips to Europe, sagas of rental cars, no reservations, maps and guidebooks.  This time, however, the Sara la Kali we found in the South of France, the Camargue, at Saintes Maries de la Mer, will not wait. She changes with the season.  Here she is, in the crypt area of the Church, in August, far from the crowds of the May pilgrimages.  We had full access for leisurely thought. We wanted to show the full reverential setting.  See http://www.bonjourparis.com/story/camargue-saintes-maries-de-la-mer-gypsy-festival-m/

The church itself  echoes the theme of threes:  an older building reinforced to serve as a fortress against the Moors years ago.

Saintes Maries de la Mar, Camargue, France


More to follow on the town, the small hotel that had room for us in their inn, to come. Why should someone with no known connection to Roma take such an interest.  Kinship does not require demonstrable kin.

Who else might be Gypsy, Roma? Ongoing interest log.

Who Else might be (or is) Gypsy, Roma?

Assimilation Process for Survival

 

Bill Clinton Gypsy Heritage?

Not a new concept at all.

This is recreational looking-up.  I have not vetted each site, just pass on as an interest the possibly Roma heritage for someone you may know.  Where assimilation may be the only way to survive, we should not be surprised at all that many could and did move, change name, marry into a mainstream culture family, and the culture may dissipate as to Roma roots for that family. See Gypsies, A Persecuted Race, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, including England, at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/victims/romaSinti/gypsies2.html; http://www.btinternet.com/~radical/thefolkmag/gypsies.htm

I found these sites suggesting individuals with Roma heritage by a search for Rumney, a term I understood was used in England for Travelers; and the listed surname for the Rumney family who appeared on St. Mary's rolls in England with a marriage in 1730, Mitt Romney's forbear. 

Here are some Rumneys, and the Rumney term there is is used for the group. 

• Other uses of Rumney, not referring to the Traveler group, are apparently not Traveler, so the term itself is not definitive one way or the other.  See Rumney VT at http://www.reference.com/browse/Rumney; and an area of Cardiff Wales, see http://www.cardiffians.co.uk/suburbs/rumney.shtml. Rumney NH might be?  see http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/3-rare-gypsy-photographs-taken-rumney-n-h-in-1890

1. Bill Clinton -- fair use quote

"Bill Clinton - born William Blythe III, his dad's side are Scottish Gypsies. While in office he quietly repealed the last of the laws against Gypsies in the United States, and appointed the first Gypsy to be director of the US Holocaust Memorial Council.."  This from Famous Gypsies of Hollywood (a stretch to put Clinton there) at  http://able2know.org/topic/85629-1.

Would this root make Mitt Romney, whose family name had been Rumney in the 1700's, more comfortable exploring this possible heritage as Rumney?  On the other hand, Former President Clinton had his family records sealed, see claim at this forum site, at http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/830936.  Could he unseal them now?

Linkish sites for Clinton, if: The Last of the Gypsy Royals, http://www.gypsyroyals.com/the-last-of-the-gypsy-royals/; Blythe, the Famous Gypsy Family of Scotland,  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/755009/posts

A few of the many others listed at that able2know site --  I cannot recall if I included these in earlier lists here.  This site is a forum, so if I see a disputed identification, I have excluded it.

2.  Pablo Picasso

3.  Mother Teresa 

4.  Johnny Cash

Roots of Romney. Rumney Many Meanings of Romney, Including an Aristocrat. Gypsies, Sheep, Locale. - Other Roots of Romney - Surname of Mitt Romney. A Post Script

Mitt Romney. Roots of Romney.

The Surname Romney first was Surname Rumney, as to Mitt.
Other meanings: 
Sheep (still Roma roots), Locales, a Population of Roma, and Updates.

Add: An aristocrat of Romney name - 
Not of the Mitt branch (Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney) 

Track some Roots of the Name

Update 2012.  This site disavows any connection with, or sympathy with, the ideas and pejorative, self-aggrandizing, causation-ignoring innuendoes of Romney connections to Roma as stated at http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2012/09/24/romney-s-gypsy-conspiracy-to-take-over-a?blog=214.

Nomadic peoples: valued and should be, and should be allowed place and dignity. Without that, behaviors emerge that are not that of the nomadic culture, but a survival response where their culture and ways are threatened.  See comparative nomadic culture, the Inuit, a film entitled "The Fast Runner."  See http://www.isuma.tv/atanarjuat/ and review, New York Times  June 7, 2002.  Nomadic peoples are the root of Western Civilization, is that so, in that we began Biblically, is that so, and should we not provide room, seek to learn. Honor, loyalty, valued.  Among us, not so.

Flags. How to Hoist with Pride

Surnames and roots. Does your surname in any way affect your attitudes.  This follows up an earlier post here on Gypsy surnames, where we found "Romney" as a word for a clan (?) of gypsies, or Roma.

What does "Romney" mean.  Mr. Romney may be one of these in the ethnic category, with some gypsy or Roma connection to the word, some not.

See the choices: You have your own history with your own surname.  Look into the possibility with other people's names.
.
1.  Romney as a Breed of Sheep.

Romney is also the name for a breed of sheep. See fleeces on and off the hoof at http://www.romneywool.com/fleeces.html.

Will voters say Baa? Feel fleeced? Or follow follow follow. Need to look up origin of sheep types. A start: the American Romney Breeders at http://www.americanromney.org/.

Romney, then, from the sheep connection,  are sturdy and meat-producing. See http://www.americanromney.org/b_breedstd_white.html. The sheep originated in the Romney Marshes of Kent, England - see paragraph on the Romney Marsh at #3 here. Were the people thereafter associated?

2. Romney as colloquial, a clan of Gypsy? Rumneys.
 .
Roma.
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Romney as colloquial. For Mitt's family, the name began as Rumney. Is it merely that?  A search for "romney gypsy" turns up odd references to Romney Gypsies, but nothing concrete. The term is simply used in different contexts, informal mostly.  Later research shows that the name Romney was, in earliest records of the family, spelled Rumney; and that Rumneys was also a name for the Rumnichals, or Romanichals, or gypsies.  Were these specific Romney forbears gypsy?  It was a time of gypsy persecution, ongoing for centuries in Europe and also in England; so a move to find refuge, a kind of refuge theory to explain where the persecuted roma moved, into which new circles, to survive, requires more data than we have; it would not be unusual to move into the mainstream culture, however. Rumneys become Romney.  Or never were gypsies, whatever.  Take some DNA and find out fast.   Origins and Divergence, Gypsy DNA, National Institutes of Health, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1235543/

Mitt?  Swab a cheek?

Most Visited

3. Romney as a bog.

Romney is also a marsh in Kent, England, where there is a tearoom serving scones etc. See http://www.lathebarn.co.uk.

Romney Marsh. The location is on Donkey Street. The Romney breed of sheep came from here - see this long-wool type (new word: flockmaster) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_(sheep).  Romney sheep. Do an images search. Look like these.

Rom.  Here are Rom, the cultural nomadic group whose living and life derive from them, the sheep in Romania, and the Vlach-Rom shepherd.  Connections to Roma ultimately entering England via Kent and Romney Marsh, setting up lives there, bringing traditional ways?  Cultural historians, please find out.

Sheep, herded by Vlach Rom, Romania

Vlach Rom shepherd, Romania

4.  Romney as a language, all its own.

Romney is also a word for the "Cant" that was spoken by Gypsies, a languages others could not understand. See "The Genesis of Anglo-Romani" at Scholarship and the Gypsy Struggle. This is the heading for a Google book online with an enormously long URL -http://books.google.com/books?id=CGWFAQ9RZ0oC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=england+romney+gypsy&source=web&ots=CMpN0NAojx&sig=0cfy0vVMYW8KBwElLNu6HZHxC20.

Do a search for England Romney Gypsy and it should come up. See post here at Gypsies, Roma: Cant.

5. Romney as a road to somewhere; and an aristocratic name as well.

And there is a Romney Road in Greenwich, England,  an original Roman Road. That is where the Greenwich Royal Observatory is. Very long URL, so do a search to see it. Greenwich SE 10. Was this connected at some time with a community of gypsies, or not?

No.  Romney Road is not Romani.

This was named after an aristocrat Romney.  Henry Sidney First Earl of Romney born in Paris 1641:

• The aristocrat Romney is a different family entirely from the Rumneys of Dalton. 
•  Henry Sidney First Earl of Romney was born in Paris in 1641, a/k/a Viscount Sidney of Sheppey, also spelled Sydney, Baron Milton.  
• This Romney was active in the Revolution of 1688 to bar the Catholic James, Duke of York, from succession to the throne of England, see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509013/Henry-Sidney-earl-of-Romney.  This Romney also supported the Protestant William of Orange
• "Diary" of Henry Sidney -- see http://www.bartleby.com/218/1022.html

6. Romney is not a traditional surname itself for gypsies. Rumney, or Rumneys, or Romni, was used, however, for the group:  Rumneys, for example.

The word is similar to the word for Gypsies or Roma, but we have not found it as a surname in itself, chosen or used by a specific family. Could it have been used as an adopted surname, when persecuted gypsies moved out of a threatening locale, or economically downtrodden one, to another place to blend in.  The first Rumney, for example, that we find in Dalton (where Mitt Romney claims his roots) is in a marriage record there very late, in 1730. Is that a taking of a new name, to escape difficulties, then an intermarriage and assimilation, or not?

Ask about context: What was going on with Roma in England in that century and after, if not before, that might lead to many numbers converting to the new religion, Mormonism, in the 1830's or so, when it appeared?

Or that would have led to some (how many?) leaving old roots and blending into the mainstream instead. Thomas Rumney the joiner in Dalton: was he one of those?

England, Kent in particular, makes no reference at all in this bland overview, see http://www.kent.gov.uk/community_and_living/gypsies_and_travellers/history_of_gypsies.aspx.  This site, however, also from the UK, is realistic and includes the persecutions, killings, expulsions, see http://www.grthmlondon.org.uk/information/gypsy-timeline/
 .
Romney as a surname in itself is not listed among the gypsy surnames at this site.  See the other names that appear - http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/presentsurnames.html.

Click there for the link to the Romany and Traveller Family History Society and other links.

• As with other families of other groups coming here, the surname ultimately adopted by a family could be one applied by a bureaucrat or deaf clerk in ignorance at Ellis Island, where the place of origin or occupation or some mis-heard version attached to the forms and the use.

• Even in our family, people from Sweden who apparently dropped the plebeian name for children, that would have been "Andersson" for the sons, and Andersdotter for the daughters. That custom, of including the father's name as the surname of children -- were following the naming custom where simple farmers (as opposed to the nobility) just identified their offspring as so and so's son, or so and so's daughter. 

• In many cultures, people take the names of a place, or an illustrious family. Our gang, at least a branch of it descended from the Swedish males with big egos, took the more glamorous name of a place generally nearby -- Osterlund -- East Land.  Or was that a husband along the line, name now forgotten?  Farmers, folks.  From Kajsa Johannsdotter and her Anders to Osterlund

Our gang in another direction added an "e" just to help the post office deliver de letter de sooner de better to the multiple farms, yes, farms, all with people related, in Ottawa. Spell, spell, cast the spell. FN 1

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FN 1

There is this similarity in roots, Romney and Romani and Roma, Rom'nie.

Perhaps, with that similarity in association alone, Mr. Governor Mitt Romney will catch an interest in roots of names, and take a deeper interest in the wellbeing of the uncountried, the immigrant, see Joy of Equivocating, Immigration, the cast-offs, the travellers with lesser cameratic profiles.

If he does this, he should be forewarned: These are dangerous diggings. If you think you are "somebody," guess who you are not.  We find ordinary folk, like most other people, and were not even expecting royalty when we looked back.  But would it be fun?  Sure.  My own birth name stems from (among other untangles) an Old Norse word for "cormorant," or cormorant breeding grounds at rocky shale cliffs, like we found at the Orkney Islands.


The World. A Place to Hoist Many Flags

See Orkney Road Ways, and this new site - ://www.scalf-family.org/HPScalf/Chapter%202.htm. Phalacrocorax pelagicus, the green cormorant. See ://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONMensNames.shtml. Hardly glamor.

It gets worse. Cormorants throw up a lot. A family of vomitus, are we. See ://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/nyregion/22birds.html, so the crocorax in Phalacrocorax must be that. The Croak.

This is hardly a pedestal of ancestry connections. People with horns on, trading in cormorants, vomiting under the aurora borealis. Stereotypes! How do we ever rid ourselves when even our own sense of humor betrays us. Feet of clay. Or in fur boots.

With that in mind, I remain interested in surnames, from all origins, all parts, all occupations, places, deeds. My crowd dispersed (wisely) so I have great respect for those who stayed together.