Looking for German gypsies names? Learn more about the interesting gypsy German names which are still used in present times…
One curious aspect about the Gypsies is the name and the origin. They have the profuse use of a double nomenclature whereby each family has a public and private name. The public name is known to outsiders and the private name is restricted for the family and the tribe itself. The public names are very English and the private ones are uncouth and mostly singular following the Gypsy language. The two classes that the names can be divided into are the trade names and the family names.
Origin of Gypsy German Names in Modern Times
When it comes to German Gypsy names the important thing to understand is that there are names from the English language which have been adopted for the trade. These are Cooper and Smith. In the Gypsy dialect they are known as Vardo – mescro and Petulengro. The first one means a carter. But this is not a literal translation rather an acceptance. The other name translates into Smith in English. Again the meaning is difficult to translate and may sound or come close to the horseshoe-fellow or tinker since petala signifies in Gypsy language a horseshoe.
It is interesting to see that the family or surnames taken by the Gypsies are very aristocratic and hailed from rich families. It is interesting to see that the despised and poor Gypsies ended up with time-honored names. However, these names were awarded to them under the shelter provided by certain wealthy families, and they eventually adopted the names of their patrons.
Since the Gypsies did not have any cares about maintaining the English etymologies they just changed bos with buss which becomes the vulgar English verb. Another name the Gypsies adopted is Grey. This is because it is similar to a word in their language known as Gry. It means a horse and is basically translated into German or English. They go for a play on the sound of phonetics rather than translating the meaning of the word to match an English or German word.
The name Herne is another Gypsy rendering which arises from their crest which is the heron. When tracing its background the word for duck in the Gypsy language can be substituted for the heron because there is no word for heron in Romany.
Stanley and Lee are other derivatives of Gypsy names. Lee comes from the tribe of Purrum which is also pronounced as Purrun. This translates as onion so one would never know why they would take this name on. However, Lee translates into onion and maybe it was picked up because it sounded similar to leek. However, it not a leek in the literal sense of the word. Purrum is still close to cousin-german translated into a leek. Most of the Romany words can be traced back to Sanskrit also. Therefore the origin of the names goes back from the subcontinent all the way through Europe.
