Hello OrangeSplash.
A name alone is no indicator because Romany quite often took a common name of that area.
Cooper is a strange one though because they weren't just transported to America, a fair amount came back again. So they can confuse the most advanced researchers.
Smith is the main one, you'd never know unless you had lots of other indicators too, like occupation, geographical location, births of children etc. There are so many clues to look for.
I would say that most Romany identify as such, rather than just English.
But most are proud of their UK heritage too.
I consider myself as English Romany, but when talking DNA and to distant cousins in other countries it's the Romany that's important if that makes sense.
Yes, Romany are still world wide, ooh amazing fact.
Me and one of my cousins traced our DNA to a tribe in Tajikistan, called the Pamiri Tajiks. Now, this doesn't sound too amazing as we all know that everybody came from Africa or India, or so is said.
But the fact that we share the same DNA as people living there now, and it can be traced to when Romani were there about 1000 years ago.
So we asked specialists how this could be true and it's all because of those awful words I mentioned above that leave you needing a bucket.
The funny thing is we've decided to go on a visit and hopefully film it, when we can.