The Romani (aka Gypsies, though some consider that a slur) are nomadic people who dispersed across Europe about a thousand years ago. In other languages they have exonyms like tzigane, gitan, and bohème, but "Romani" seems to be the preferred term nowadays.
But if one wanted to speak about them in Latin, what term should be used?
- Romani and roma are endonyms (names they use for themselves), but using Romanus seems overly confusing in Latin, since they don't come from Rome.
- Bohème can be back-derived to Bohemi(c)us, but they're not from Bohemia/the Czech Republic either.
- "Gypsy" and gitan both go back to Aegypti(c)us, but they're not from Egypt.
- Tzigane and its relatives come from Greek ἀθίγγανος "untouchable", which would give Latin athinganus or intangibilis, but I can't see that as anything other than insulting.
In Romanian they're called Rromani or Rroma to distinguish them from, well, Romanians. But starting a word with a double letter looks distinctly non-Latin to me.
In Romanian they're called Rromani or Rroma...
- that is not accurate. The correct Romanian forms are "rom/romi" (Roma person, singular/plural), "rom/romă" (adjective, masculine/feminine; rarely, academic: "romani" ), hard to confuse them with Romanian (noun: român, româncă, adjective: român, română). But the English form Romani is closer to Romanian name of the country (România) and that has created a rather dubious (nationalistic) trend of double-r forms being tolerated in print in non-academic context. But that trend is marginal, as double-r is unheard of in Romanian.