In these islands the term "Traveller" has been used for the last thirty of so years as the normal term to cover various groups of people who might otherwise be described as Gypsies, Tinkers, Didakoi. It sets aside the kind of arguments that might arise as to what to call particular people, and uses one aspect of the way of life they have in common.

More recently the term has been used - as "New Age Travellers" - to describe people with a non-travelling background who for various reasons have adopted a related lifestyle, a combination of hippieish people, and of refugees from marginalised lives in cities. And in fact people from older communities of Travelling People have sometimes wished to distance themselves from these newcomers, rejecting the term, or qualifying it,maybe by describing themselves as "Gypsy Travellers." That's because "new age travellers" have come in for a lot of bad treatment and scapegoating.

I'd think most people who are into folk music would inevitably be familiar with the term "the Travelling People", thanks to Ewan MacColl's song. (The link there is to Dick Gaughan's song site - I couldn't find it on the DT, though likely enough it's there.)

Incidentally, it's a strange thing that the word "traveller" means exactly the same as the English word "roamer" - which sounds exactly like Roma. But I think that is a sheer coincidence, since I gather the word "roam" dates back to a time before the Roma came to Europe.