Roma and Sinti/Talk

Folks, it's my understanding that these people call themselves "Rom" and consider Gypsy / Gypsies derogatory terms. How do we want to handle this?

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I thought Rom was just one group of gypsies, the other being the Sinti? -- Simon J Kissane

Wow, this is even more complicated than I thought. :-) My main point was, "Do we want to list people under a term they consider offensive?" Comments?

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I say yes, lets definitely not use words that might be considered derogatory. Maybe something like "Rom and Sinti"? (You might want to check first that I am correct about there being two groups with these names -- I'm not entirely sure, I just vaguely remember that there were something like that.)

Also: what relation, if any, do Irish Travellers have to gypsies? -- Simon J Kissane

And for that matter, what's the difference between the Roma and the Sinti? The article goes to great lengths to say they're different, then doesn't tell us why. -- Paul Drye

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Caught something the other night on some educational station (150 channels and can't keep them straight...) saying that at this point Romany has actually got a huge amount of loanwords from mostly central and eastern Europe, making it a kind of hybrid language (in the way that yiddish is). Anybody know anything about that? JHK