page_title: Romani people
section_title: Possible migration route
hierarchical_section_title: Romani people / Origin / Possible migration route
context_page_description: The Romani, colloquially known as Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, and diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani as a people originate from the northern Indian subcontinent, from the Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab regions of modern-day India.
  Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE. Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma". They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. The Romani arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1007. They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history. Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.
context_section_description: They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about CE 500.
  It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.
caption: The migration of the Romanis through the Middle East and Northern Africa to Europe
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