To Name a Land: Early Uses of Romania/Ῥωμανία (4th–8th Century)

This article re-examines the debate on the origins of Romania/Ῥωμανία, focusing on its linguistic and social context. It is argued that instead of a Greek versus Latin origin, the emergence of Romania/Ῥωμανία is better understood in a bilingual fourth-century milieu, influenced by linguistic code-switching in the East. Furthermore, the article traces the distribution in three waves: fourth-century Eastern witnesses tied to identity and orthodoxy, fifth-century Western pious texts from Africa and Italy, and sixth- to seventh-century Byzantine use in Constantinople’s political vocabulary, with later Western re-emergence tied to Italian territories under Byzantine influence. Romania/Ῥωμανία appears in religious and military contexts, often in an othering-sense of “us” against “them.”