Romani people in Greece
people living in Greece who are of Romani descent
The Romani people in Greece, or Romá (Greek: Ρομάνι/Ρομά), are called Tsinganoi (Greek: Τσιγγάνοι), Athinganoi (Αθίγγανοι), or the more derogatory term Gyftoi (Greek: Γύφτοι). On 8 April 2019, the Greek government stated that the number of Romani citizens in Greece is around 110,000. Other estimates have placed the number of Romani people resident in Greece as high as 350,000 and 750,000.
History
Origin
The ancestors of the Romani people originated in South Asia, likely from the regions of present-day Punjab, Rajasthan and Sindh. Linguistic evidence has shown that roots of Romani language lie in what is now India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indo-Aryan languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. The language has been significantly influenced by contact with other languages, particularly Persian, Armenian, Byzantine Greek. It's grammar and phonology also reflect South Slavic influence.
Arrival in Europe
A number of words in the Romani language originating from early Armenian indicate that Romanies were in Armenia prior to linguistic changes of the 9th century. From Armenia, they migrated through Anatolia, before arriving in the Balkans—Europe proper—during the Byzantine period. They are believed to have been present in Constantinople by the 9th century, possibly as early as the 7th century.
“Romani people in Greece” enters the record as people living in Greece who are of Romani descent. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Romani, people and Greece can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7361504. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Romani people in Greece” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.