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Comment by dayofthedaleks | Hacker News Reader

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In some countries it's not considered a slur. In the UK, the government's list of ethnic groups contains 'Gypsy or Irish Traveller' - https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-gui....

IMO it's up to the Romani to decide not the UK census site.

But in fact it seems to be the term used by some Romani groups

> The term Gypsy, which originates in the word "Egypt", mistakenly believed to be the original homeland of the Gypsies, has been controversial.[8] Some Romani activists reject the term, but it is embraced by others.[8] Although the term "Roma" was endorsed in place of "Gypsies" at the first World Roma Congress in London,[9] many Romani people in Britain prefer to call themselves Gypsies, or names that include the term such as Romani Gypsies or Romany Gypsies.[10][11][5][12][8][13] They also commonly refer to themselves as Romani or Romanies.[14]

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy,_Roma_and_Traveller)

I believe (but can't find a clear source) that there are also Native American groups that prefer to be called Indian. This is a close analogy Egypt <-> Romani, India <-> Native Americans.

But it is true that many people only recently stopped using "gypped" as a slur. My kid was reading A Wrinkle in Time and looking for vocabulary words the other day, and I had to tell her that "gypped" was probably not appropriate for her homework and that we don't use that word anymore. So that's one reason to be aware that "Gypsy" is controversial. In my experience, many people are not aware of this fact at all because it so rarely comes up.

It's not only present in the title. Midway through: "Louis’s mother, was a more joyful figure, and proved to be resilient after her husband’s death, sailing with Louis’s gypsy family to the South Seas."

I'm inclined to think the author is aware of modern preferences, and that Stevenson's family may have referenced themselves this way.

That's true although "Roma" is a more sensitive (and accurate) description. The linked article is still a bit weird, as RLS does not appear to be Roma or even a vagabond/itinerant figure. He just travelled a lot.

I believe Roma is a very continental European (German?) term. I’ve only ever heard it in the context of “Sinti und Roma.” In any case it A) refers to a specific subset of the broader “Gypsy” sects and B) is virtually unknown in America.

In the US there are “Gypsy” and “Irish Travellers,” with the latter being a specific subset like Roma, and even then I’ve only heard the term used regionally, e.g. in Augusta, SC where a population lives.

The communities I'm in in America avoid the use of the term precisely because it's an exonym. Around here people use Roma or Traveller.

Granted my sample size is O(100), but that's not nothing either. Although I tend to roll in more progressive circles.

In the US, where this publication is based, it’s pretty universally frowned upon to use an ethnic group name as a metaphor for a character trait.

It’s also a bad editorial decision. Here we are debating the headline and not even talking about the article.

>Here we are debating the headline and not even talking about the article

Your reaction to a thing comes from you, not from the thing.

> debating the headline > not even talking about the article

Both typical around these parts.

I suspect the author or publisher may have chosen the name of the book for that attention-drawing controversiality. RLS was not the healthiest author and partly 'wandered' in search of better prospects than those of Old Blighty.

Authors can illicit reactions by word choice; it's part of the job. "Know thy audience" for a reason.

It seems to me that "peak sensitivity" with regards to potentially offensive words and ideas was reached in 2020-1 and the US seems to be on the downward trajectory since then, with the slope of that trajectory vastly increasing in 2025.

So this editorial decision might be just part of this overall trend.

Plot twist: yes it's an insensitive term, and it appears to be gratuitously applied to Stevenson. But not without precedent. Phillip Callow wrote in an earlier book "Louis became in turn a bohemian dandy, a literary gypsy..." Notably not literally a gypsy. But an interesting convergence in choice of words.

interesting question: if you've genuinely _never_ heard that X is a slur, and you innocently use X, is it offensive?

I for instance never had heard anything negative about the word "gypsy" so didn't get a feeling of the term being crass.

The answer to your question is "yes, but typically only very mildly".

Offense is not some Boolean, and intent matters in determining how offense something is.

For example, a kid reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might unknowingly repeat a word they learned from that book that we consider extremely offensive today. We'd probably all pause that conversation and explain that they should not use that word.

Ideally, most folks upon learning that a word is offensive go, "oh, apologies, I had no idea" and the other party goes, "No problem, now you know" and everyone moves on. Doesn't have to escalate, doesn't need to be bigger than that.

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