Romani population
For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019),

Endonyms
Rom means husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, which may be related to the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the

The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practice of child marriage. Romani law establishes

Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language, an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in.

Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma. Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani migration's

Arrival in Europe
According to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century. A document of 1068, describing an event in

Romani contemporary art emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the