Romnichal - Appearance

Appearance

Many, but not all, Romanichals are noted for a fairer phenotype than that of other Romani groups in Europe. Lighter-skinned Romani are not uncommon, and a light phenotype, including individuals with blond hair and blue eyes, can also be seen in established Eastern European Roma communities.

The practice of intermarriage between white Europeans and Romani groups was commented on by Constantine, Prince of Moldavia in 1776: "In some parts Gypsies have married Moravian women, and also Moravian men have taken in marriage Gypsy girls...these people have bound themselves to spend all their lives with the Gypsies." The French writer Felix Colson, writing in 1839 about his visits to slave holdings in Romania, remarked of some of the Gypsy slaves: "Their skins are hardly brown but blond and beautiful." Lighter-skinned Romani girls in Slovakia, noted for their beauty, were given the nickname "Papin" or "Papinori" (white goose) in the Romani language to indicate their light skin tone.

The same phenomenon of a light-skinned phenotype observed on the continent can be seen in other Romani communities, including the Romanichal in Britain, due to some limited intermarriage between themselves, settled people and/or other Gypsy/Traveller groups.

Stereotypically, darker skin is seen as a racial characteristic among the Romani. This attitude has proliferated the myth of the "True Romani", an inadvertent discriminatory term described by some Romani scholars as one that "...allowed writers and policy-makers to dismiss people as an unwelcome social blot on the land, people of 'little or no Romani blood' who gave the 'True Romany' a bad name."

Blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes are not uncommon features among both the Roma and British Romani groups. Examples include lighter-skinned Roma who were conscripted into fighting units during WWII; a Slovakian Roma called Otto Baláš wrote an account that stated: "They also took my cousin Pal’o. He didn’t look like a gypsy—He was white." Other light-skinned Roma were able to pass as non-Gypsies and avoid the Romani genocide or Porajmos, as in the case of Vojtěch Fabián, who told a doctor he was a Roma but was admonished: "Never say you’re a Gypsy, you don’t look like one" and consequently was able to hide his Romani ethnicity from the authorities. Some Roma have been noted as passing for Slovak or Hungarian despite being of Romani descent, while the Bulgarian Roma, musician Ivo Papazov, has stated of the light skinned phenotype: "I am one of the few light skinned people in my family but I know I am Romani."

As with the varying phenotypes in continental Romani groups, the British Romanichal are an authentic subgroup of the Romani people. They display genetic markers distinct from those of other people of the British Isles. These markers show them to be most closely related to continental Romani groups like the Sinti from Germany, Austria and the Roma people from Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. The Finnish Kale, a further sub-group of the Romani people, allege that they are descendants of Romani people from the UK.