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Dom People: One of the Middle Eastern Gypsies 26/02/2010

There have been many gypsy groups living in Middleast. We will introduce you some of these gypsy groups and Doms will be the first of them. Doms who live in Turkey, Irak, İran, Jordan, İsrael, Philistine National are spread to different areas of Middleast.

The word “Dom” which has a phonetic similarity with the word “Rom” gained its recent meaning in the unsuprised develoment process when we think of the other words which are used to define peripatetic communities. In the time this development process can be understood better when we compare the words lexical meaning of the word and the meaning given by the society.

In Indian language, in daily use – exact same thing the word Rom as used in Romanes language – the word Dom which means “ human-being” after gypsies calling them Dom turned into a word which has negative meanings. Today this word refers to a social category and is used to define peripatetics who have jobs like musicianship and blacksmithing . Upper- cast Indian people use this word in a very wrong meaning such as “cursed, dirty and half – person” . But in Middleast the word “Dom” spesify to a particular ethnical group. And this group speaks one of the Gypsy languages Domari.

Doms are one of the oldest Gypsy groups in Middleast. Most probably before Romas' ancestors leaving India, by different Indian Gypsy clans and local gypsy groups' contraction made a new group Doms arised and started to speak Domari.

Doms are having similar problems with the other gypsy groups from other areas of the world. Having difficiulties to get education, health problems, unemployment by losing their traditional jobs, unstable conditions in Middleast and the wars are the most important problems. In the near past different NGOs started for solutions for Doms' problems. Dom Research Center and Domari Society are doing researches about Dom's history and looking for possible solutions for the problems.

Doms have different traditional jobs. Musicianship, sievemaking, blacksmithing, silver jewellery are only some of them. Dom women are usually doing tatoo making and future telling. In Turkey Doms who live in Hatay and South- East Anatolia are usually doing public type dentists. On the other hand losing the traditional jobs makes Doms to look for other jobs as well. Doms live in the heart of Middleast; Jeruselam are doing some cleaning jobs together with the traditional jobs.

Sources: http://www.wix.com/domarisociety/Domari-Society-Website
http://www.domresearchcenter.com/