INTACT IMAGES/Jurnalul National/Christian Silva

The legislative proposal initiated by the PDL (Liberal-Democratic Party) deputy, Silviu Prigoana, to change the name from ‘rom’ to ‘gipsy’ was sustained by the Romanian Senate’s Commissions for Human Rights and Equality.

The initiative got a positive response from the members of the two  previously mentioned Commissions, supporting the name change for the Roma/ Gipsy people living in Romania to be simply Gipsy (in Romanian, ‘tigan’ or ‘tiganca’ pronounced ‘tsigun’).

The decision is meant to stop the confusion that many nations seem to have in regards to the citizens of Romania. According to Silviu Prigoana, many seem to believe the citizens of Romania are Roma people (Gipsy) and this is due to the names’ similarity. “Thus, hundreds of millions people from the Planet do not have philological or etymological studies. They simply and fairly associate between the ending ‘-ia/- ania’ and the country/ nation that has this ending; Britannia= brit+ania, thus ‘the country of the Brits/ the English people,’ Mauretania=Maur+(et)ania, the Maurs country, on the same logic, Romania=rom+ania, ‘the Romas country.'”

Still, not everybody is happy with this initiative. While the Romanian Academy supports this decision, many Romanian ministries, such as the Culture Ministry, the External Affairs Ministry, and the Roma National Agency do not agree with it.