The Romani language and people originate in India. The absence of a written history made it elusive to establish, but comparative linguistics has conclusively established an Indian origin, as a member of the Indo-Aryan language family. The state of the art in this research area is the recent Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics.

The arrival of the Roma in Europe is documented from the 14th century, but the first attestation of Romani is from 1515 AD (2010 discovery). Linguistic analysis traces the proto-Roma to Northern India, and the proposed Roma common linguistic ancestor to the Byzantine Empire.

More recently, linguistic and historical analysis has been strengthened with genetic studies, which trace Roma DNA to the Punjab and a single founder population that left the Punjab around 1500 years ago.