Pavane:

Romany is from rom, Romany for man, or perhaps nearer romni, a woman.

Lots of useful stuff about the Romany language

I doubt if 'most' travellers have been 'true' Romany for a long time, perhaps never. There has always been this distinction between the ideal Gypsy who lives in his caravan on the heath and is the romantic repository of lore, wisdom, and mystery, and the nasty (real) people who are camped illegally in our nice posh estate, don't pay rates, why don't the police evict them etc. ad nauseam. It's worth reading Chris Hill's 'Freedom Against the Law' to see how Gypsies and vagabonds have been viewed in popular and official culture through the centuries.

The Gypsies played a huge role in the development of Klezmer (Jewish) music in eastern Europe- there was always two- way traffic between the cultures, and bands were often mixed. The Hungarian group Musikas did an excellent CD which concentrated on the music that modern Gypsies (descendants of those who survived the Nazi persecutions they shared with the Jews) thought of as particularly Jewish.