The word gypsy derives from what was once thought to be the origin of the Romany-speaking people, though we know from the film Latcho Drom (1993) and books like George Borrow's The Gypsies of Spain (1841) that "gypsies" came not from Egypt but from northern India. A subsequent derivation of gypsy -- the word gypped, as in cheated --is now banned (as a pejorative) by the CBC.
On that note, the little boy at the Hungarian train station who offers to pay a band of Roma to make music so he can dance away his mother's sadness gets full value for his gesture, his money refunded. This is a scene that never fails to turn me into a blubbering mess, and while passing through Basildon, England one autumn I visited a fortune teller to tell me why.
"Show me your palm," was the first thing she asked after her mother took my ten pound note and tucked it into a cigar box. As she studied my palm, I asked if she had seen the film Latcho Drom, and without looking up she said, "Yes, yes, and you think you are the little boy at the train station."
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