Early Life
Hancock was born in London. His mother, Kitty, is Romanichal; his father, Reginald (Redžo), was part Romungro, the descendant of a Hungarian speaker of North Central Romani named Imre Benczi. He acquired the surname Hancock through Imre's daughter Maria, who married a member of an English West Country showman family of that name.
In the late 1960s, he became a Romani rights activist after reading reports about anti-Romani discrimination in Britain. In particular, he took up the cause of Romani rights after reading about an incident in which Romani children left unattended by their parents, who had been arrested, started a fire by knocking over a paraffin lamp. 1971, he graduated with a Ph.D. in linguistics.
Read more about this topic: Ian Hancock
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)