In Romani culture, a gorja, gadjo (masculine), or gadji (feminine) is a person who has no Romanipen.
Etymology
The exact origin of the word
gadjo is not known. One theory considers that it may come from the proto-Romani word for "peasant" and has the same root as the Romani word
gav (village).
In other languages
Bulgarian
The word has been borrowed in Bulgarian as
гадже (gadzhe),
, meaning boyfriend or girlfriend.
French
The word has been borrowed into French slang as
gadjo (masculine) and
gadji (feminine), meaning a boy or girl (or less frequently, a man or a woman) or boyfriend and girlfriend.
Portuguese
The European Portuguese words
gajo (masculine) and
gaja (feminine) originate in Romani/Caló and are used in everyday language to refer informally to a man or a woman, in a usage similar to "guy" in English. The word
gazim has been attested as a rare use in Brazilian Portuguese, with the meaning of a strange (i.e., foreign) woman, probably with roots in the Romani
gadji.
Scots
The word is encountered as
gadgie (or sometimes
gadge) in
Scots language, formerly only used by the Roma/Traveller community, but since the 20th century, it has been in general use by the Scots-speaking population.
In most areas it is heard, notably
Edinburgh, the
Scottish Borders, and
Dingwall,
has a generalised meaning of a man that the speaker doesn't know well. In
Dundee, it is a more pejorative term, referring to a poorly educated person who engages in
hooliganism or petty criminality. In the village of
Aberchirder, it refers to a local person.
Spanish/Caló
The word passed from Caló to Spanish slang as
gachó[ gachó in the Diccionario de la lengua española.] (masculine) /
gachí[ gachí in the Diccionario de la lengua española.] (feminine), acquiring the generalized meaning "man, guy" / "woman, girl". The Caló word for a non-
Gitanos is
payo/
paya.
[ payo at the Diccionario de la lengua española.]
See also
-
Gadjo dilo, film about a French man's travels to Romania to find a Romani singer
-
Gaijin, Japanese term for "foreigner"
-
Goy, Hebrew and Yiddish term for "non-Jew"
-
Gora, racial epithet for white people in India
-
Gringo, Spanish and Portuguese term for "foreigner"
External links
