Talk:Pikey

message: Pikey is a word that Romani Gypies use for non-Romani travellers.
"They aren't real Romani (Gypsy) they are Pikies". 
It is also a word they used to use for a member of a Romani family who has committed an offence and the family coucil (called a 'Kris' in Romani and every true  Romani family used to have one) has cast them out as punishment. The reason they are called "Pikey" is bacause it is regared amongst the Romani family that they never existed as one of the family hence Pikey = non-Romani traveller.
English pikies usually took to caravan life due to lack of money or being on the run. Most southern English Pikies were poor East Londoners who supplied the thousands of person work force required on the farms of Kent and Sussex that fed London a hundred years ago. In the summer months Londoners would live in caravans, shacks or tents and during the winter months would go back to their run down cheap accomodation on the arseholew of London with all the smog. Many decided not to go back to the smog but to stay out in the countyside doing what ever odd jobs or work (& crime) they could find. In Kents there were many of them and many of the London pikey families were related. In more recent years have been made to live on council owned sites or have settle into council houses. On the council site there are descendents of thes traditional gypsy families (Romani) and some have intermarried with pikey families that it is hard to tell who is true Gypsy and who is Pikey. Kent is full of them. Also St Neots Cambridgeshire, most don't or will never work due to the fact they steal or have criminal records. They speak traditional Romani language which is a derivative of Hindi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.52 (talk) 18:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Bit offensive! 195.194.75.157 (talk) 14:51, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

text: It’s racist I’m a gypsy whatch what you’re saying people 2A00:23C8:128B:701:3057:7550:26A9:AA21 (talk) 05:40, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pikey actually means a non-Gypsy traveller 

message: Interesting   BBC interview with Gloria Buckley, MBE (a Roma) at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/content/articles/2009/06/25/gloria_buckley_lw_2009_feature.shtml>. In this she explains the meaning of the term:
 
It says "Gloria is very happy to refer to herself as a pikey, something which many people from the non travelling community, myself included initially, may find somewhat uncomfortable, but again she is happy to point out this is just because of a lack of knowledge. "I really don't mind what you call me as long as you call me, because father always used to say you should be proud of it.One day I went home from school and told him that a boy had called me gypsy and he asked me if I had thanked him.When I told him no he said "well next time somebody calls you gypsy look at your mother, look at your things, look at the food at the table and look at the open road. Then there was another word, didicoy (a Romanichal term).Now people see that as an insult and get offended by that, but we didn't because father used to say that it was like decoy, are they gypsies or are they not? So we don't get insulted when anyone calls us didicoy. Then there was the other one, pikey, and that was because we used to gather around the turnpikes.We could either go through or stand there to sell our wares and apply our trade. So we never thought that was anything to get insulted about."
 
Theres also a video of her on this site, explaining how she set up her legal site for travellers at Sandy Park caravan site in Beck Row near Mildenhall.
Also, from <http://www.larp.com/jahavra/language.html>:  'DIDIKAI' MEANS 'GYPSY FRIEND' - why would a 'blood Roma' be offended by that??? If one appeals to a source cited in a Wiki article (at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller>( a member of staff at Hull University), "Didicoy" is a Romani term for a child of mixed Romani and non-Romani parentage; as applied to the Travellers, it refers to the fact that they are not "Gypsy" by ethnicity but Irish by blood and lead a similar yet distinct lifestyle". So someone would call a traveller a 'Didicoy' as a means of identifying them ethnically from a true 'blood' Roma - which may be absolutely essential for anyone who is simply trying to respect the differences in their cultures etc, or of course, for one of the many Roma families in the UK, when referring to a member of the travelling community that is not 'true blood Roma'.  I don't know if any Roma have been prosecuted for making such an ethnic distinction.  
Likewise 'chavey' is actually the name that the Dale Farm Housing Association gave to the youth club set up for their own children on the site in Essex - according to a website penned by Grattan Puxon (Secretary of the Dale Farm Housing Association <http://www.advocacynet.org/resource/1218> ), about the pending eviction there, which reads " In addition, it would mean the closure of the Saint Christopher Centre, headquarters of the 'Dale Farm Chaveys', a youth club that caters for some 100 young people, nurturing their culture, language and history....".— Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.231.196 (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pikey and Didikai are not Racist 

message: have a real problem with this article in it's current format. It amounts to a tabloid article. i.e. "Indicators of Pikeyness". I was tempted to put it on VFD, but I think that it really needs a complete rewrite. Mintguy (T) 08:02, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: 2004 rewrite

message: :I am an English Romany Gypsy and I have never heard the word "Pikey" used in the sense attributed here to Manfri Fred Wood. Wood claims that Gypsies use the word to refer to individuals cast out of the family by some sort of exotic-sounding council that has not existed for centuries. This is fairytale stuff. "Pikey" is understood by English Gypsy people as an historical term of abuse, directed for most of its history exclusively at them. This therefore means that another meaning of "Pikey" offered here on behalf of English Gypsies, i.e "Pikies" = "not-proper-Gypsies", is also false, since "Pikey" is merely a word non-Gypsies used to refer to actual Gypsies. It was believed in my family to be doubly insulting to us in particular, since one line of our descent carried the surname Pike.
The popular English folk wisdom stating that there are "true Romanies" on the one hand and fake Gypsies, or "Pikies", on the other, is actually nonsense, at least lexically speaking. While Gypsies do often like to point the finger at individuals or families whom they believe to have an inferior ancestry to themselves, they do not do so using this terminology.
On the basis of these and other confusions I would second the commentator below who (6 years ago I see) proposed gutting this article. It's full of unsubstantiated rubbish.
: I am also Romani and the word pikey is not only a slur like the word gypsy, it’s used to describe travellers, typically those who steal, giving the rest of us a bad name. It’s a stereotype that needs to be forgotten :
I am Romani Kale/ Sinti , in my Familia and Tribes a 'Pikey' is some one who has been judged by the Kris (Council of Elders) for committing a serious breach of the  taboo, they are judged unclean,  without honour and without family and they are cast out and are " Pikeys" , it is an extreme insult to call us " Pikey"
in Romani it is spelt "Phiki"  , not the English spelling "Pikey " , "Phiki" is a Hindi word translated it means "Ghost". 
So if you were "cast out" and it was Mokadi (Taboo) to talk about you , then you would be a "Ghost"
I do have to say I haven't heard of a Kris being called since I was a child in the early 70's,  the last one I know of personaly was in the Autumn of 1973 in Judt outside of Cardiff WayneAD55 (talk) 19:57, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Myths

message: Strange to find this... At least in Norfolk (the UK) a pikey is the opposite end of the spectrum, a subculture with general skater/grunge/goth influences. This kind of pikey is known as a townie. Not sure what to do with this info, but an interesting example of geographical linguistics... --Sum0 16:13, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Townie, Pikey, Chav - look at the ChavScum website and you'll find all are synonymous in that sense. Dialectual difference only... here in Bishop's Stortford, "townie" was common until chav became ubiquitous. AKismet
===Seconded===
I second this report - the Bermondsey gypsy families (such as the Brown clan) who added big chunks of the Rom language to Cockney certainly used it that way - they were bombed out in 1940, which is why you had the sudden appearance of the term in the London suburbs.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.227.84 (talk) 13:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Norfolk

message: I second this report - the Bermondsey gypsy families (such as the Brown clan) who added big chunks of the Rom language to Cockney certainly used it that way - they were bombed out in 1940, which is why you had the sudden appearance of the term in the London suburbs.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.227.84 (talk) 13:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Seconded

message: I attempted to address some of the blending together of definitions between this and townie, chav, etc.. by redirecting to Chav. See what you think. Sam [Spade] 16:58, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect

message: Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I don't recall ever hearing this...  until I moved to Ireland.  (I'm not sure if this goes to it being less common in Scotland, or me not paying attention.)  Alai 07:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK slang? 

message: Might I ask if your friend was a New (Age) Traveller? New (Age) Travellers are a completely separate group to the long-established hereditary Travelling peoples of Europe, and for the most part have no more than one or two generations of such "culture" behind them. I ask this because the word "Pikey" i not considered accaptable among English Romany Gypsies, unless one is relating a story of racist abuse. It is certainly not used as a badge of honour with some sort of 'ironic and subversive power'. It has a shameful history of usage by, for example, violent police officers and bailiffs kicking camp fires into the faces of small children. Yet another example of scarcely informed contribution to this debate.
Kingshalmaneser (talk) 12:49, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  An 'ironic and subversive' term? I doubt it 

message: I have lived in Stanford, Bedfordshire for nearly four years.  I hear the word "pikey" used to refer to gypsy families in the area.  More often, I hear the word "did" (not sure of spelling) used, by people that have lived in the area for many, many years.  I cannot find any written evidence, but has anyone else heard this usage?  I get the impression it is being used in the same perjorative sense as "pikey".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by  198.28.92.5 (talk) 11:07, 10 June 2008
:See http://www.amazon.com/Diddakoi-Rumer-Godden/dp/0330398687/  --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Also see the Wikipedia article for Didicoy. --Ef80 (talk) 15:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is "Did" another synonym for Pikey? 

message: The Oxford English Dictionary traced its use in 1837 by Times, “referring to strangers harvesting in the Isle of Sheppey island”. Later that century it meant a "turnpike traveller" or vagabond. Recently, It’s use was associated with Irish travellers and Roma Gypsies. news.bbc.co.uk, How offensive is the word 'pikey'? mirror.co.uk, Formula 1 commentator in 'pikey' Ofcom probe--Florentino floro (talk) 13:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin

message: This article describes the definitions, origins and usage of a word.  I suggest that it be moved to Wiktionary, as Wikipedia is not a dictionary. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Examples of its use have been added with diminishing returns. I have edited accordingly. Marshall46 (talk) 16:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

text: Go ahead, Hroðulf.  Wiktionary has, "(UK, pejorative) A working-class (often underclass) person; can vary from specifically Irish Travellers, gypsies, or travellers from any ethnic background, but now increasingly used for any socially undesirable person, with negative connotations of benefit fraud, theft, single-parent families and living on run-down estates."  I don't think this wordy article adds anything to that. Marshall46 (talk) 16:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary 

message: Re common usage. No non-UK person would have a clue what a "traveller" nor "romani" truly was- the European nomad is universally known as a "gypsy" for better or worse. Secondly, in all the UK-english dicionaries I have consulted, the term "pikey" is noted as being in common parlance synonymous with a gypsy. How a tiny minority differentiates people within their minute peer group is immaterial. Thus, we must consider the definition outside of solely a UK (including Ireland) myopic context.
I move for "pikey" to remain defined as a gypsy (as used by most English speakers)- perhaps with some discussion if the main editor feels it is relevant.Starstylers (talk) 16:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is 60 million people (the population of the UK and therefore at least the number of people who could use the word in that sense) a 'tiny minority'? Minority yourself. 90.193.44.19 (talk) 16:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

text: To say that this term is used mainly in Ireland, (much less 'the Republic of..) is nonsense. This new edit should be referenced to a Reliable Source or removed. RashersTierney (talk) 17:19, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Then remove it ClemMcGann (talk) 20:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Pikey Usage

message: Decided to link to Chavs in the section:
"In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the definition became even looser and is sometimes used to refer to a wide section of the (generally urban) underclass of the country"
I had wanted to add at the end "(generally known in the UK as chavs)" but was reverted minutes later with the reason "Not the same thing".
To justify this - I will state my reasoning:
Look up in the article Social structure of the United Kingdom and look at the section "The Underclass" and find quote:
"These people are occasionally stereotyped as "Chavs", rightly or wrongly". The author of this states "Occasionally", but it is a very lazy and a very well used epithet for all ne'er do wells in the media, so it is a cultural thing in the UK at the present time...too many articles to link to but just have a look on Google if you don't believe me!
There are possibly nuances that may be chav and non-chav throughout the underclass, but it's a label that is in almost universal usage, so much as to get a mention in this article - surely?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.62.134 (talk) 21:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We are not a reliable source for ourselves, and I note that the proposition is also unsourced in the article you cite. I doubt the equation of "chav" with "pikey" largely because chavs generally have money to spend, but do so lacking taste, and have attitudes to match. I think a reliable source is required to make the comparison, and even then it has to be treated with due caution. Cheers. Rodhullandemu 21:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

text: That would be a good thing; my education in social science is limited to my Master's and research in Criminology, so I am not a sociologist. But where principles are concerned, our guiding principle here is finding a reliable source for this proposition, and you will see that I have tagged disputed and unsourced statements in the article you linked to above. Rodhullandemu 21:55, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

text: You shouldn't confuse my username with anything else. It's a mere alias and not intended to convey any particular value. Rodhullandemu 22:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contemporary usage - section about "In the late 20th and early 21st centuries" 

message: Re this quote:
:"Pikey is one of the negative words associated with gypsies: people who fight and steal equals 'pikeys'. It includes fortune-tellers such as the famous Gypsy Rose Lee..."[11]
This suggests a confusion between "Gypsy Rose Lee" the stripper (not associated with gypsies or fortune-telling) and "Gypsy Lee" an actual fortune-teller at the time – see for example . Manytexts (talk) 03:26, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't seen the cited source but I assume it's cited correctly. This might be confusion on the part of the author of the cited book, but on the other hand, I don't think "Gypsy Rose Lee" is that uncommon a tradename amongst fortune tellers at UK seaside resorts. However, quotations are rendered verbatim, even if factually incorrect. To avoid any WP:BLP issues, assuming there is still a fortune teller using the name, perhaps the second part of the quotation should be removed since it actually doesn't add anything in particular. Rodhullandemu 03:38, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gypsy Lee? 

message: Pikey is a pejorative slang term used mainly in the United Kingdom to refer to people of low social class. No it isn't; it refers to travellers, or settled people with a traveller background, and predominantly Irish travellers. It's true that some young people use 'pikey' as a general term of abuse, just as they use 'gay' to mean 'lame' rather than 'homosexual'. This doesn't mean that that's the general usage. --Ef80 (talk) 20:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Low social class"? Come on! 

message: This travelling sense of "pike" survives in the Boontling dialect, in an area of the US Pacific Northwest (Anderson Valley, in and around Boonville, California). E.g. "pike to the dusties" means "walk a very long way".  I don't know enough about the history of that jargon to know if it's connected in any way to Roma or other Travellers, or survived incidentally as it did in "turnpike". However, our own article on Boontling says it was partly derived from Irish and from Scottish Gaelic (and Spanish, and a local Native American language) as well as English, so vectors for such an influence clearly existed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:22, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boontling 

message: I just added a merge proposal for this article. This article is rather a violation of WP:NAD. It essentially just defines a term and then provides various miscellaneous examples of the use of the term at various times in history. To the extent that the content is appropriate for Wikipedia it can be merged into the Irish Travellers article, and perhaps some into the Romani people article. Beyond that the rest of the content, though interesting, probably does not belong in Wikipedia (perhaps Wiktionary?).
-- MC  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.131.2.3 (talk) 19:41, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. This article is about a word, not the gyspy/traveller people (and redirecting it there could arguably be considered offensive). It doesn't belong on Wiktionary because it contains more than a mere definition and usage notes. Wikipedia has plenty of articles about words that are notable in their own right, including many considered to be ethnic slurs; this one is equally justified. Robofish (talk) 23:25, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

text: I would also oppose this merge based on the same arguments as above.★Trekker (talk) 18:24, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I also think this article is well referenced enough to be a standalone article. Since there hasn't been any movement on this in a year, I am going to close this merger. Million_Moments (talk) 12:10, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge: Irish Travellers + Romani 

message: Court of Piepowders was what the fellow meant to say, at least in Wiki-ish.  I don't believe there is any actual connection, though.  Anmccaff (talk) 05:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recently reverted edit 

message: ...to refer to people who are of the Traveller community, a set of ethno-cultural groups found primarily in Great Britain and Ireland. It is also used against Romanichal Travellers, Welsh Kale, Scottish Lowland Travellers, Scottish Highland Travellers, and Funfair Travellers.
That text was reverted by Sarah777 linking to "Irish Travellers" page instead of the page "Itinerant groups in Europe" in the above statement though the specific instance doesn't specifically refer to IRISH TRAVELLERS as the "Traveller community" but rather "a set of ethno-cultural groups found primarily in Great Britain and Ireland", hence linkage to "Itinerant groups in Europe " page. The revert to "Irish Travellers" page wasn't necessary174.212.228.128 (talk)
: Apologies. The edit was flagged as possible vandalism on my watchlist and I had assumed that "pikey" was specifically an Irish term for Irish travellers so I reverted. Reading this talk page has been very educational! Sarah777 (talk) 09:49, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, I'm told that the term was not used in Ireland at all until relatively recently - in the past 20 years. Sarah777 (talk) 09:56, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text reverted to something that doesn't actually follow