Various conjectures have been formed, and coincidences have been searched for, to obtain a solution of these queries. Some persons adverted to this or that name only of the Gipseys, without attending to other circumstances. Because they were likewise called Gipseys (_Cingani_), they must immediately derive their origin from the Grecian heretics, called Athingans: then again they must have wandered from the African province formerly called Zeugitana. { 137} Another time they are supposed to be the fugitives driven from the city Singara, in Mesopotamia, by Julian the Apostate: others again transplanted them to Mount Caucasus, and made them Zochori; or to the Palus Mæotis, making them descendants from the Ziches. { 138} Some people imagined that instead of Zigeuner, they should be called Zigarener, which they thought a corruption of Saracener, and they must certainly be Saracens. Another writer (to return to Africa) conducts them from the Mauritanian province Tingitane, and supposes them to be the Canaanites, who, being driven out by Joshua, settled here. Still another brings them from Mauritania, and, to corroborate his opinion by the name, calls them descendants of Chus; as he thinks nothing can have a greater affinity in sound, than Zigeuner and Chusener. Herbelot judges the coast of Zengebar to be their mother country. Bellonius, on the contrary, looks for them in Bulgaria and Wallachia, where their ancestors are said to have lived, under the name Sigynner. Cordova stumbled on Zigere, formerly a city of Thrace, which he assigns as their native soil. Some people fancied they had heard that the Gipseys called themselves More, and often used the name _amori_ among one another (not _amori_, but _Discha more_—Get out, fellow!) and now they are Amorites!
Another party, besides this or that appellation for the Gipseys, considered their unsettled way of life, or selected some particular circumstance from their manners, by which they decided concerning their origin. Wherefore they were sometimes torlaques, faquirs, or kalendars; { 139} sometimes the remains of Attila’s Huns, at other times the Avari, who were vanquished by Charles the Great: then again Petschenegers, who played their last stake in the twelfth century; or perhaps a mixture of all kinds of rascally people gathered together, having collectively no certain country, as their name _Zigeuner_ indicates, signifying, ‘to wander up and down;’—for which reason, it is said, our German ancestors denominated every strolling vagrant Zichegan. By several writers they have been thought inhabitants of the Alps and Pyrenées; others suppose them to be Cain’s descendants, who, on account of the curse denounced against their stock, have been compelled to lead a wandering vagrant life. Because they pretend to tell fortunes, some have supposed them to be Chaldeans, or some Syrian religious sect. Brodæus formed his judgment from their clothes, in which he thought he discovered a resemblance to the Roman toga; and thence he imagined they were natives of Wallachia, descendants from the colony sent by Trajan into Dacia to keep this newly-conquered country steady in its allegiance. And, according to his assertion, people in Germany do really call them _Wahlen_ (he writes _Walachen_), that is to say, _Italians_.