Roma in Hungary - History and Language

History and Language

The date of the arrival of the first Roma groups in Hungary cannot exactly be determined. Sporadic references to persons named Cigan, Cygan or Chygan or to villages Zygan can be found in charters from the 13th-14th centuries. However, persons bearing these names were not Gypsies and Zygan was not inhabited by Roma people in the 14th century. Accordingly, these names seem to have derrived from an Old Turkic word for plain hair (sÿγan), instead of referring to Roma people in Hungary.

Romani people first appeared in Hungary in the 14th and 15th centuries, fleeing from the conquering Turks in the Balkans. The Gypsies' presence in the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was first recorded in a chapter by Mircea the Old, prince of Wallachia who held the Fogaras (Făgăraș) region in fief as vassal to the Hungarian Crown between 1390 and 1406. The charter makes mention of 17 "tent-dwelling Gypsies" (Ciganus tentoriatos) who were held by a local boyar Costea, lord of Alsó- and Felsővist and of Alsóárpás (now Viștea de Jos, Viștea de Sus and Arpașu de Jos in Romania). Next the financial accounts of the town of Brassó (now Brașov in Romania) recorded a grant of food to "Lord Emaus the Egyptian" and his 120 followers in 1416. Since Roma people were often mentioned as either "Egyptians" or "the Pharaoh's People" in this period, Lord Emaus and his people must have been Gypsies.

In the mid-18th century Empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and Emperor Joseph II (1780–1790) dealt with the Romani question by the contradictory methods of enlightened absolutism. Maria Theresa enacted a decree prohibiting the use of the name "Zigány" (Hungarian) or "Zigeuner" (German) ("Gypsy") and requiring the terms 'new peasant" and 'new Hungarian' to be used instead. She later placed restrictions on Romani marriages, and ordered children to be taken away from Romani parents, so that they could be raised in 'bourgeois or peasant' families.

Joseph II prohibited use of the Romani language in 1783. The forced assimilation essentially proved successful - in the 19th and 20th centuries the vast majority of the Romani population, who had settled hundreds of years earlier and held onto their customs and culture for a long time, gave up, even forgetting their native language and assimilating in Hungarian society.