# Maramoi



## Maroseika

Hello. I tried to ask this question at the Etymology forum, but looks like not too many Romanian natives are there.

I'd like to know the origin of _Maramoi - _an obsolete pejorative Romanian name for Jews. Is it primordially Romanian or loaned? Are there any cognates of this word in Romanian?


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## irinet

Hi, 
I have seen your question before, but I haven't got any recollections about this.  I never heard of it nor used it. Not only it's pejorative as you said,  but also,  it seems obsolete. If I find something new about it,  I'll post again.


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## farscape

Never heard of this word before, but a famous Jewish-Romanian blues  guitarist, A.G Weinberger defines the term as what Roma musicians are  calling the Jewish musicians. For more details, read the interview with  A.G. Weinberger here.

Later,
f.


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## Maroseika

Thank you, I have already seen this article, and it is ambiguous: either it was a Gipsy word from the very beginning, or Gypsies preserved old Romanian word in their language. Actually Gipsy's trace is very interesting for me, because it explains how this word might get into Russian (this is the basic reason of my question). In Russian it is low-colloquial and has a wide range of pejorative meanings, both in Masc. and Fem. forms.

Well, my question to the Romanian natives is: can you discern any Romanian motives in this word? Any probable cognates in Romanian?
And why they compare these pairs in the article: _maramoi/evrei_ and _muzicant/muzicieni_? Is _muzicant_, being a German (and also Russian) word, as pejorative in point of a musician as _maramoi _is in point of a Jew?


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## féebleue

I wouldn't say _muzicant _is necessarily pejorative per se, but it is rather used to define street musicians/people who play a certain instrument very well, but did not study music in an academy. _Muzician_ describes a person who studied music (e.g. someone who plays in an orchestra, etc.). _Muzicant _could be pejorative if used in contrast with the other term.

As for _maramoi, _I had never heard it before. After searching a bit, all I could find was a brief definition in an argot dictionary, which simply states that it means „Jew” and that it's pejorative. I couldn't find any old contexts for it, and all the modern-day contexts I found were some obscure, blatantly Antisemitic forum posts that were clearly meant to be extremely offensive (I guess they thought the more common pejorative terms for Jews weren't insulting enough, so they searched for a rarer one). There was no music-related meaning there, the word was used only as an insult.

However, in an old dictionary I did find the word _maramoaică_, defined as a traditional dance.

There might be a relation with the Romanian region _Maramureș _(in the northern part of the country, a region where there once lived a significant Jewish population). This is just my speculation, I could find no proof of that, and I am no specialist in etymology. The interesting thing is that the etymology of the word _Maramureș _itself is unknown, and one of the theories states that it might come from the Jewish word _marmaraiș, _which is apparently a superlative of _mar-amar_ (no idea what that means).


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## Maroseika

Thank you, very interesting. By the way, what is the origin of Romanian _muzicant _- German or Slavic? 
About _Maramure__ș, _hard to imagine that Romanian region could be named after Jewish expression, it looks like folk etymology (like Warsaw < Beersheba). But who knows...


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## féebleue

Yes, you're probably right about the folk etymology. As for _muzicant, _according to the official dictionaries, it comes from the German word _Musikant _and the Italian _musicante._


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