An invasive species has an ethnic slur in its common name. Entomologists are changing that AP Bob Child/AP A female Lymantria dispar moth lays her eggs on the trunk of a tree in the Salmon River State Forest in Connecticut. By Neelam Bohra and Radhika Marya, CNN Ethel Brooks, raised in a Romani community in New Hampshire, grew up with other kids telling her to stay away from “gypsy moths.” Brooks didn’t understand the connection between her Romani community — for which the word “gypsy” has been used as a pejorative — and a destructive, invasive insect species that “poses a danger to North American forests.”