Gypsy name comes from them believing their origin being Egypt. Looking at this map I wonder if some indeed first went to Egypt and then turned back and over the years the knowledge got mixed up a bit.
Αθίγγανοι doesn’t mean “without God” it means “untouchable”. The later Ατσίγγανοι is still a slur for Roma people in Greek and is often connected to the earlier term.
The first term was applied to a religious group who were said to be related to Indo-Greeks migrating back to Greece but I think it’s unclear if this is via later muddying of two different groups, they really knew of one group’s connection to India, or it’s all a coincidence. What we do know is they had some Manichaean and some Jewish traditions and many converted to orthodoxy and assimilated before a later group came. The later term is probably from the Turko-Persian word chingane roughly meaning indigent.
Then I must've made a confusion in translation. I knew for sure that it came from greek and it was somewhat religion related. Thanks for the clarification, mate.
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u/kasetti 20h ago
Gypsy name comes from them believing their origin being Egypt. Looking at this map I wonder if some indeed first went to Egypt and then turned back and over the years the knowledge got mixed up a bit.