In 2007, when Carley Seale opened a store in Dallas selling whimsical treasures that caught her eye, she wanted a name that fit the vibe of the place.

She settled on “Gypsy Wagon” after seeing a large wooden cart as part of a display at a wholesale market. It seemed to be the picture of all that she had imagined.

“The name just fit. I wanted it to be playful. A name that would allow me to do lots of different things with the store,” Seale said.

But she didn’t know at the time that the term “Gypsy” has a darker history, and is offensive to an ethnic minority known as the Romani people who travel around Europe and came to the Americas but originated in northern India.

In the last few years, she started hearing from people asking questions about the store’s name. Was she a Gypsy? What did she know about Gypsies? Had she heard of the Roma?

“I didn’t have an answer. I started doing some research and my eyes were opened. I realized this situation was bigger than me,” Seale said.

The Gypsy Wagon sign on North Henderson went down this week. New permanent signs have been ordered.

The new name is Favor the Kind.

Seale’s situation is not unique as brands increasingly deal with new cultural norms as terms that were once commonly used are reassessed. Most notably, in sports, teams that have brands considered offensive to Native American culture have been pressured to change in recent years.

But the change does come with a price, said Peter Noble, professor of advertising at Southern Methodist University, who noted that Seale has “successfully built up 10 years of brand equity,” which will be lost with the new name.

“She’s giving up something of value,” Noble said. “Even accounting recognizes a name has value and calls it goodwill on the balance sheet.”

The beginnings

Retail is Seale’s third career, but it was her first passion. The Tyler native majored in accounting at the University of Oklahoma and went straight to work for EY. Later, she switched to medical sales. The whole time, she thought about opening a store.

Seale, 42, had a vision that it would be the kind of store where shoppers would come and always leave happy whether they bought something or not. Unique gifts, home décor, stationery, apparel and accessories culled by Seale needed a whimsical name.

She’s good at what she does. The Gypsy Wagon has grown during a period when big retail companies are closing stores and struggling with dwindling traffic. Seale has 59 employees and three more stores in Austin, Houston and Crested Butte, Colo. Developers call her all the time to open stores in their centers.

Carley Seale is owner and founder of Gypsy Wagon. The Dallas-based company is changing the name on its four stores in Dallas, Austin, Houston and Crested Butte, Colo. The reasons have to do with new awareness and sensitivity to the Roma community in Texas and elsewhere. (David Woo / Staff Photographer)

The new name

After all these years, Seale knows that dropping the brand that draws shoppers to trendy North Henderson Avenue is risky. But she expects that customers will accept the new name, and that a year from now, no one will remember.

She is putting her spin on the Latin proverb: Fortune favors the brave.

"We don't want to disappoint our customers. We put our heart and soul into this name," Seale said. "It means we favor local artists, we favor small businesses over big corporations and we favor brands that give back."

Customers have been invited to a party Thursday night at the Dallas store to hear from Seale about the name change.

Favor the Kind gives more voice to the store, she said. Employees rewarded her decision when they said they want to work for a place that would do something like this.

Seale is respecting the Romani people by changing the store's name, she said. Most people don't know there's even a controversy over the common use of Gypsy.

A person who helped her figure it out was Ian Hancock, who is director of the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin and has represented the Romani people at the United Nations.

"Our main objection is the common use of the word and it's applied to lots of people who have nothing to do with us," Hancock said. There are groups of traveling scammers that promise to black-top a driveway or put on a new roof who are called Gypsies.

Hancock said he once asked the owner of a store called the Gypsy Peddler if she would call her store the Jewish Peddler and she said, "of course not."

Hancock, who is a Gypsy, said it's OK for him to use the word with other Gypsies, but not so much for others. "To us, it's like the 'N' word."

The term gypped has a bad connotation and comes from the word Gypsy.

The basic problem is that in this country especially, the average person doesn't think we're actual people," he said. "Gypsy is a proper noun, not a behavior like hippie or hobo."

The Gypsies were actually craftsmen and artists, and in the U.S., some are college professors, Hancock said.

Carley Seale stands outside her North Henderson Avenue shop on Tuesday, after the lettering displaying the old name was removed. (Staff Photographer / David Woo)

There are more than 20,000 Romani Americans in Texas and more than a million in the U.S. Their ancestors arrived in the Balkans from northern India in the middle of the 13th century. As nomadic people, they didn't have a country; because of their darker skin, they were believed to be from Egypt, which is where the word Gypsy came from.

In the U.S., people like Hancock are trying to make Americans more aware. "It's not that it isn't politically correct, it's just being respectful," Hancock said.

Seale, who has been mulling over this decision for more than a year, said she's confident customers will get it. Although she hasn't tallied the actual cost of changing the name, the physical pieces, the signs and bags, are in the "tens of thousands of dollars."

"It seems like the right thing to do," she said. "And now that we're doing it, it's like a new beginning."

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

Correction: Feb. 22, 6:30 a.m.: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the owner of The Gypsy Wagon. Her name is Carley Seale, not Searle.