Rhomaioi was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Comment: The main dispute that inspired the POV tags by the proposer above concerns whether this constitutes an ethnic group, which is sensitive because it determines whether certain people in the modern day have a claim to land. It is complicated by the fact that the terms "Byzantine" and "Greek" have disputed interpretations on scope.
There is no scholarly dispute over the name of these people in the Greek language, which is Ῥωμαῖοι (Romaioi), functionally defined as medieval Greek-speaking Calchedonian-Orthodox people, initially of the Roman Empire when it was based around Constantinople (better known now as the Byzantine Empire). There are inconsistent scholarly references to these people in English, such as Byzantines, Byzantine Greeks, Romans, East Romans, and related. There is a debate on when this group became an ethnic group. The leading scholars who debate this topic are Pohl, Kaldellis, and Stouraitis.
A consensus on this issue is needed, I believe, at a substantive level before interpreting the POV tags as a basis of an immediate fail. The proposer is the sole person who has challenged the GA status of this article, which is not to say they are wrong, but a decision on the article's name and definition is needed first. Biz (talk) 02:07, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
POV tags are in the article because there is a neutrality issue. Neutrality is a Good Article criteria.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Requested move 2 January 2026
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move reviewafter discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Byzantine Greeks → Rhomaioi (endonym)Rhomaioi (endonym) – Recent Talk discussion has resolved a year-long dispute and addressed neutrality concerns. To better reflect the main content of this former GA article, it is requested that the article be renamed to Rhomaioi (endonym) and scoped as identity-based.
Content on society and population would be split to a separate population-centric article, while Byzantine Greeks would be repurposed as a historiography article covering the modern scholarly label. Biz (talk) 20:00, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
For editors reviewing the RM without following the full Talk archive: the issue is not replacing one common name with another, but aligning the article title with the article’s actual scope.
“Byzantines” is the common name, but it is broader than the subject of this article and applies to multiple populations, while “Byzantine Greeks” functions primarily as a modern historiographic label rather than a self-identified name. The article itself is identity-focused.
“Rhomaioi” is the historically attested endonym used by the group described in the article and provides a precise, non-expansive title that avoids the ambiguity underlying the prior Talk dispute. Biz (talk) 20:18, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Support The proposal is the outcome of a long process in building a consensus (see above) that aims to resolve the above mentioned challenges that IMO originated from national sensitivities. While I have doubts that the proposal will prevent future provocations, and the belief the Kardellis's claims (currently debated in academia) might gain widespread acceptance. However, I sincerely do hope that the proposed plan will rejuvenate constructively the particular topic and later on a new "Byzantine Greeks" with a narrowed focus (as outlined above) will be created. A.Cython(talk)23:24, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Ill-advised move
Since its creation two decades ago until today this was an article about a people. It has now been turned into an article about the term they used to denote themselves. Where is the article about the people themselves? Astonishingly, it is now nowhere to be found! The move of the article's title was an ill-advised move, as it brought about the eclipse from the encyclopedia of an encyclopedia article about a people that has been and continues to be to our days the subject of scholarly interest (under various names throughout the history of scholarship, but in contemporary times most often as "Byzantines"). It would be the equivalent of moving the article French people to Français (endonym), while removing (almost) all content about elements of their culture to an article like Demographics of France, a preposterous choice. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 14:16, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the comment. The move is not just one article. The basics are done to resolve the year long dispute. What we need now is corresponding articles on Greeks, Hellenes, Eastern Romans, Byzantines, and Byzantine Greeks. Greek people: we can do that as well.
Hypertext technology does things that history books cannot do. I ask for your patience and collaboration, happy to solve this to your satisfaction.
The goal is by distinguishing identity, historiography, and population we enable more precise content that can then be bundled together with less issue of neutrality. Biz (talk) 16:22, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz: Thank you very much for your response. What you propose ("articles on Greeks, Hellenes, Eastern Romans, Byzantines, and Byzantine Greeks") is (a) not a reply to my question about which is the article about the Rhomaioi themselves and (b) a recipe for confusion that seems an attempt to resolve a dispute about an article by creating a number of POVFORK articles -- "Eastern Romans", "Byzantines", "Byzantine Greeks" are terms that have been or are being used to describe the very same people-- and deleting the article that gave rise to the dispute. As stated in the policy page, "Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors". At the same time, the move deprives -- till when? -- the encyclopedia of an article that is a noteworthy encyclopedic subject, the Byzantines themselves. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 Together, we can make this happen quickly and over time Good Articles. While this is a complicated issue, it's not a POVFORK issue once you understand the content strategy.
Here is my proposal.
(1) The content about the population now lives at: Demography of the Byzantine Empire. Let's move the discussion there if you feel the title of that article should be something better.
(2) The reason this article is "Rhomaioi (endonym)" and not "Rhomaioi" is because is it not a common name in English, even though it's used in scholarship. Let me remind you the article already uses it throughout and in Greek it's what they are known as (not "Greeks"). Meanwhile the content on this current article is all about identity and nothing was added (so we're dealing with what us existing content).
(3) The names of "Eastern Romans", "Byzantines", "Byzantine Greeks" are indeed terms used in English scholarship. They are referred to in the lead of this article. We absolutely need articles on them with better scope. The issue with "Byzantines”, the actual common name, and that we discussed on this talk page is that the "Rhomaioi" and/or "Greeks" are not 1-for-1, because how do you then explain the Armenians, Jews and other populations? The issue with “Byzantine Greeks” is even though this is a known name, is that it was disputed on neutrality reasons and we were not progressing on it hence why I came up with this solution with support from those were here the last month. Further, Byzantine Greeks have two related but different identities ("Rhomaioi" and "Hellenes") and also have several exonym’s ("Greeks" and "Rum" to name just two). By creating a new article that has summary style explanations of the above as well as the, as currently named, “Demography of the Byzantine Empire” article -- means we give coverage on all the things that matter for people searching for Byzantine Greeks
So in order of priority to help allay your core concern
a discussion about the population-centric article, currently living at Demography of the Byzantine Empire but could just as easily be “People of the Byzantine Empire".
The creation of a new “Byzantine Greeks” article which was always the plan
The creation of other related articles with Hellenes (endonym) the most important so that it, along with Rhomaioi (endonym) and Demography of the Byzantine Empire, completes the content required to meet the English name used in scholarship, the so called "Byzantine Greeks", of these people.
For now Byzantines is a disambiguation and Byzantine Greeks redirects here. This article explains it's a name used by people and under the title it says "This article is about an ethnic group. For Byzantine people generally, see Demography of the Byzantine Empire.", so there is no confusion. I also think Greek people is a great idea for an article, but it currently redirects to Greeks
Biz, I truly thank you for your interest over the years on Byzantine-related articles, but I am afraid I do not get what "the strategy" you present is with regards to the question I asked ("Where is the article about the people themselves?").
The problem is the following: From some time in late antiquity onwards there existed a people that spoke Greek, practised Christianity and called themselves "Rhomaioi". This people is most usually referred to in contemporary scholarship as "Byzantines" and is a noteworthy encyclopedic subject. Which article is the article that the reader of this encyclopedia should be pointed to in order to read and learn about this people?
Please take into consideration the following clarification: I am not asking about which is the WP article that deals with the "Demography of the Byzantine Empire" or the "People of the Byzantine Empire", (who include non-Rhomaioi populations, such as Bulgarians, Armenians etc). I am trying to understand which is the article whose subject is the "Rhomaioi" themselves. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 17:54, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That's the article that I currently working (as I said below) I am a little slow. There will be a new "Byzantine Greeks" article that would cover the period that you are describing. However, there is confusion in the literature as to whether they should be called Byzantines (see Kardellis's position). Note that there is even disagreement as to when the Byzantine Empire even started into being. For some, it is when the capital moved for others it is Justinian's reign or Heraclius's reign. Due to this inconsistency in the literature on the term "Byzantine", we opted to have Rhomaioi as the title of the current article covering the period (330-1453) and the "Byzantine Greeks" as different article covering the change of identity in the late period, particularly around the identity crisis in 1204. A.Cython(talk)18:04, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 identity + population can be incorporated into any article “name” is the point. By conflating English names as identity we go in this loop.
There is only one “Rhomaioi” article. There are many “names” for these people.
And we can only call this article as such due to the reasons I explained above. We had to move population content to scope it with identity only.
Taking your point as presented, we can have an article about “Byzantines” which contains a summary style section on the “Rhomaioi” article along with other topics. Is this clearer? Biz (talk) 18:22, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz: My question was under which title in this encyclopedia is its reader supposed to find the article that discusses the people who called themselves "Rhomaioi" and are usually called "Byzantines" in contemporary scholarship. Please clarify: am I correct in understanding that when you write that "There is only one “Rhomaioi” article" you mean that the present article (since earlier today under the title "Rhomaioi (endonym)") is the encyclopedia article that you take to be about the people? If that is the case indeed, then its current title ("Rhomaioi (endonym)") is far from being an apposite title for an encyclopedia article about this people -- because it falsely denotes to the reader the impression that this is an article about the name, the term, while, if I understand you correctly, it is about a people. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 18:48, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 Thank you for the clarification. I think there are two distinct issues here.
First, on the scope and title of the article. Yes, the article currently titled Rhomaioi (endonym) is intended to be an identity article centred on the self designation Rhomaioi. The parenthetical was added to signal what the subject is, rather than to suggest that the article is only about terminology. That said, I agree the title is not ideal for an article that necessarily discusses identity, and I am open to a better disambiguation if one can be found. As there can only be one endonym, I thought this did the job of being implicitly about identity.
Second, on the question of “the people”. I agree with your statement that from late antiquity onward there existed a Greek speaking, Christian population that called itself Rhomaioi. Where we may be talking past each other is that this article is not intended to function as a single, comprehensive ethnographic or demographic article about that population. Its purpose is analytical: to examine how the identity denoted by Rhomaioi related to overlapping identities such as Roman, Christian, and Hellene, and how those relationships changed over time in the scholarship.
Because of that, population level treatment is handled elsewhere. Readers looking for people based or umbrella descriptors as used in modern scholarship can be directed to articles such as Byzantines, Byzantine Greeks, or Eastern Romans, which serve that function. Those articles, in turn, can link to Rhomaioi where discussion of identity and self designation is relevant.
Using Byzantine Greeks as an example, they had identities that were Roman, Christian and Hellenes. But Hellenes was a pagan identity in the early empire, so not the same as the East Romans of Justinian. And the Rhomaioi are Romans speaking Greek, so how early can we say that started? 212? Does this mean the Rhomaioi who adopted the Hellenes identity, they are the same? A.Cynthon and I agreed this maps to Byzantine Greeks, the Rhomaioi of the late period. But that is just one interpretation we see in scholarship, you could argue the scholarship links it to when the Franks first recognised the East Romans as Greeks. Or perhaps it's when the Goths did per the post someone made above about Sviatoslav Dmitriev. So the article about the name Byzantine Greeks needs to cover all that.
In short, this article is not meant to replace a “people” article, but to clarify the identity framework that underlies the various names used for that population. At the high level we have the names for the reader, but as you go deeper you realise there are differences between these "people" of the Byzantine Empire. Biz (talk) 21:53, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the response, Biz. You say that this article article is now "intended to be an identity article centred on the self designation Rhomaioi", not the Rhomaioi themselves. If it is an article *only* about the identity of the Rhomaioi, I am afraid that my question still remains unanswered: until yesterday the article about the "Rhomaioi" themselves was found under the title "Byzantine Greeks" -- under which title is the article about the Rhomaioi themselves to be found today? Should there be such an article in the encyclopedia? In my opinion, it is evident that there should be one -- as the people themselves, not just their identity, are the object of sustained scholarly interest. Many thanks, Ashmedai 119 (talk) 06:37, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If this is acceptable @Ashmedai 119, this is what we will do. Make a new Byzantine Greeks article rather then the redirect it is now. It will include summary style a section on Roman identity, a section on people, a section on Hellenic identity, a section on Christian identity, and of course a section on historiography. Does this work?
The difference with a new Byzantine Greeks article is we can now say “The Byzantine Greeks are people who identified as Rhomaioi in x,y,z.” And that this is a scholarship term. Doing this means neutrality issues will not cause problems in future as this last year has. We can also do similar things with Byzantines and Eastern Romans. But distinguished, Byzantines being all people so including non Christian and non Hellenic, and East Roman whatever the scholarship supports. Biz (talk) 07:15, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz: thank you once more for your response. The process you are describing ("this is what we will do. Make a new Byzantine Greeks article [...] on historiography.") seems to be one whose end result is a (scope-wise and title-wise) a return to the situation as it existed until yesterday. There did exist a "Byzantine Greeks" article that included summary style sections about the people themselves, their identity and its elements (albeit not in different sections) and some reference to historiography. Its could and should be corrected and amended. However, to split away sections of the "Byzantine Greeks" article, change its title (to an infelicitous title such as "Rhomaioi (endonym)") only in order to re-merge them hopefully after some sort of amelioration of the remaining content, as if the presence of the material that was removed from the article was a prerequisite for editing other sections of the article, is a convoluted process and patently the wrong way to go ahead. I cannot even fathom what "similar things" should be done "with Byzantines and Eastern Romans".
My view is the following: in this encyclopedia there has to be to-day, as there existed for the past twenty years, an article about the people that called themselves "Rhomaioi". This article existed until yesterday under the title "Byzantine Greeks". This was obviously a problematic title, as (i) it reflected the point of view of the Greek national(ist) ideology on the "Rhomaioi", as has been pointed out in the discussion above by Bogazicili and Aetolorhode, and (ii) most importantly for WP reasons, it is not the name that is most commonly used for the "Rhomaioi" in contemporary English-speaking scholarship. The common name for this people, as has been also repeatedly noted in this talk page, is "Byzantines". It follows that the article that existed until yesterday should be moved to the title "Byzantines". This is the primary meaning of the term "Byzantines", that is the Greek-speaking Christian Rhomaioi -- not the non-Christian, non-Greek speaking subjects subject to Byzantine rule. Nonetheless, if people want to disambiguate the term, the new title could be "Byzantines (people)". Irrespective of that, the disambiguation page (that currently exists under the title "Byzantines") should be moved to "Byzantines (disambiguation)".
The identity of this people, the "Rhomaioi"/Byzantines, should be presented thoroughly in section(s) of the article that concerns them. This is natural and -correct me, if I am wrong- seems to happen as a matter of course in all articles about peoples in this encyclopedia. The section on Byzantine identity should become a different article, only "If [the ]article becomes too large, or [the section on identity] has a length that is out of proportion to the rest of the article", per the encyclopedia's policy on splitting articles. This is not now the case, but it may become in the future. If this does happen, the title of the new article that will conclude the more extensive treatment of matters on the identity (national/ethnic/whatever) of the Byzantines should be informative of its content and precise as to its subject matter, i.e. "Byzantine identity". Ashmedai 119 (talk) 08:05, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Ashmedai 119, thank you for taking the time to lay this out so clearly.
1. I agree the name "Byzantine Greeks", despite being used in scholarship, raises serious neutrality and scope issues. An article on those named people needs to exist, but it should not be framed as the definitive article on the subject, the Rhomaioi. Being mindful of the Greek national(ist) ideology on the "Rhomaioi" is why I'm taking this so seriously.
2. I agree that "Byzantines" is the common name in English-language scholarship, in the sense intended by Wikipedia policy.
3. I also agree that the primary meaning of Byzantines is the Greek-speaking Christian population who called themselves Rhomaioi
Doing this is compatible with retaining Rhomaioi (endonym) as an analytical article focused on identity and self-designation. Given the scholarly and historiographical disputes surrounding the term "Byzantine", which could also be said to originate from Greek/s national(ist) ideology, treating it as a name rather than as a neutral identity category helps keep those disputes from distorting analysis. If we keep the content that now sits at Demography of the Byzantine Empire (despite only 2475 words it should be more than that) and like Rhomaioi (endonym) (which has a healthy 4368 words) incorporate it with summary style in Byzantines, we reduce future distracting talk debates and disruptions to content like what happened to the Good Article Byzantine Greeks this past year and that took a serious investment of time when I was performing the FAR on Byzantine Empire. While I understand why you think this is a convoluted process and patently the wrong, it's also because I've seen the cost of not doing this and how to takes away from productive editing.
Biz, thanks for your resposne. I am glad that some important points of agreement seem to arise. I must, however, beg to disagree on the practical conclusions to be drawn.
First of all, it is misleading to state that "the term "Byzantine", [...] could also be said to originate from Greek/s nationa(ist) ideology" -- its modern preponderance in Western scholarship, actually *supplanting* the use of the term "Greek" for the East Romans, is related to a 19th century ideological attempt to preempt aspirations of the modern Greeks to portray themselves as successors of that Empire and render them its inheritors (please consult Kaldellis (2021), "From ' Empire of the Greeks ' to ' Byzantium ' : The Politics of a Modern Paradigm Shift" in in Aschenbrenner and Ranshoff The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe) (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks).
Now, even though I personally happen to agree that in a certain sense the term "Byzantine" is not a "neutral identity category" (it is in a sense neutral -- as Kaldellis has observed, it has been usually presented devoid of any ethnic/national content), this is the name predominantly used in the field of Byzantine studies at the moment. Other names (such as "East Romans" or "Byzantine Romans" etc) are only gaining wider acceptance in recent years. Given that the field of "Byzantine studies" is currently in a state of flux, with the ongoing debate about the Romanness of the Byzantines not having yet led to a new consensus regarding the appellation to be used about this people, any position presented through wikipedia's voice is bound to not enjoy universal acceptance. This, however, cannot lead to the absurd conclusion that there shall be either no article on the people (for want of a universally accepted appelation) -as happens since yesterday- or as many articles on this people as there are appellations and approaches to their identity (east Romane, Byzantine Greeks, Byzantines and so on) -- which seems to me to be what you are proposing (please correct me if I am wrong).
You say that by having the article "Byzantines (people)" present only in summary form what is now the content of the article "Rhomaioi (endonym)" [which is actually an article on Byzantine identity] and "Demography of the Byzantine Empire" [which, in fact, is about Byzantine social structure and strata], "we reduce future distracting talk debates and disruptions to content". I fail to see how this is to be achieved -- if the major points of contention are present in it even in summary form, then, for sure, disagreements should be expected to arise there as well. Yet, even if some crystall ball were to assure us that this were the case, this forms no valid criterion for splitting an article into two parts (or more?). On the contrary, encylcopedia policy is against it -- please check what is written about POVFORK (e.g. "Wikipedia does not view article forking as an acceptable solution to disagreements between contributors"). What's more, to have a separate artilce about a people and another about its identity is intuitively wrong. A given people's identity cannot but be presented at length in the encyclopedia article devoted to this people.
To sum up, (1) the Byzantines have been and are a notable subject, fit to be the subject of an encyclopedia article, which, (2) per [[WP:|the encyclopedia's naming criteria]], should be entitled "Byzantines" or, if other editors think this is necessary, "Byzantines (people)" and (3) should naturally discuss at length their identity along with the basic elements of their social and cultural organization, and (4) these aspects of the historical existence of the Byzantines [their identity, society, culture] could form the subject of appositely titled articles (Byzantine identity, Byzantine society, Byzantine culture etc) if the criteria of WP:SPLITTING apply while, which in my opinion remains to be demonstrated, (5) while content forks about the very same people, each presenting a different appellation and approach to their identity ("Byzantine Greeks", "East Romans") should not be created, per the encyclopedia's poicy, unless there is scholarship on these appelations and approaches themselves. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 17:25, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the clarification @Ashmedai 119. I think we are now very close in substance, and the remaining disagreement is mainly about structure and policy application.
First, on the historiography of the term Byzantine: you are right. Its modern scholarly predominance emerged in the 19th century largely through Western academic usage, including as a move away from “Empire of the Greeks”, and not from Greek nationalism. I am happy to correct any earlier imprecision on that point and do not see it as central to the structural question before us. (Though, I will point out Kaldellis introduces Laonikos Chalkokondyles as the inventor of Byzantine as a label for empire, who was influenced by Gemistos Plethon.)
On structure and policy, I want to be very explicit. I am not proposing multiple parallel articles on the same people under different appellations, nor do I think that would be acceptable under WP:POVFORK. There should be one encyclopedic article on the people, titled Byzantines or, if necessary, Byzantines (people), which discusses identity, society, culture, and demography in the normal and proportionate way.
Where we differ slightly is on whether a separate analytical articles should exist or be useful. An article such as Rhomaioi (endonym) is not a competing “people article”, but a topic-based analytical article focused on self-designation, terminology, and identity discourse over time. Its subject is not the population as such, but how a historically attested endonym functioned and how it has been interpreted in scholarship. This is comparable to articles like Roman identity (Roman people) or Names of the Greeks. I therefore see it as a WP:SPINOFF justified by analytical density, not as a POV fork. Identity would still be discussed substantively in Byzantines (people), with the spinoff allowing more detailed treatment in line with WP:SUMMARY and WP:SPLITTING and not be affected by predictable debates about the name.
Relatedly, recognising Byzantines (people) as the sole people article does not require that terms such as Byzantine Greeks or East Romans simply redirect there without treatment. These labels are themselves the subject of sustained scholarship and are notable as historiographical or analytical concepts rather than as alternative definitions of the people. In particular, work by Anthony Kaldellis, including The Case for East Roman Studies (2024), treats East Romans as a deliberate scholarly intervention with specific interpretive implications, while Byzantine Greeks reflects other established frameworks and is very common in the literature. Articles on such terms would examine their usage and scholarly context, not define separate populations, and therefore do not constitute POV forks.
To summarise: there should be one article on the people; identity should be treated at length there; and analytically focused articles on self-designation or scholarly terminology can exist without fragmenting the subject or advancing competing narratives. If moving or renaming Demography of the Byzantine Empire supports this, I can support that on the basis Byzantines is not just a "name" but the wp:common name. Though I have the personal preference, not essential, that we stop treating Byzantine as a noun, and more as the adjective it was originally intended: Byzantine People would do this.
I hope this clarifies that the aim is not to multiply “people articles”, but to keep the main article neutral and proportionate while allowing detailed analysis where the material warrants it. Biz (talk) 18:44, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz, as I said above, a separate article on identity might be justified to allow for a treatement of the topic more extensive than what is permitted within the boundaries of the article on the people. Had the present article reached such a point where no more information could be added? It does not seem so to me, but if editors think so, then the way to go is the creation of a new article under an appropriate title, not the move of the parent article under a new title. Having said that, the fact that in The Case for East Roman Studies Kaldellis makes an extensive argument about the future renaming of the state currently known as Byzantium, its population and the field devoted to its study does not mean that a new article should be made about the state, the population or the field (should a new article on "East Roman Studies", other than the one already existing on Byzantine studies, be created just because Kaldellis proposes the renaming of the field? It is obvious to me that the answer is "no"; the same holds for the population. However, terms such as Byzantine/east Romans can be judiciiously usefully employed within existing articles on the Byzantines -- and their identity, if one will be created. In any case, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary and the mere existence of terms in scholarship that are used or proposed to be used to describe the Romaioi does not warrant the creation of separate articles for each of them. As far as practical conclusions are concerned, I think that
(1) the material removed from the present article should be readded here,
(2) the article should be moved to a new title, i.e. Byzantines or Byzantines (people) ("Byzantine People" is not preferable compared to the use of "Byzantines" as a noun, which, though editors of the encyclopedia -including the undersigned btw- may disagree with its use, is the standard was of referring to the topic in English-scholarship, as evident in works such as The Byzantines by Cameron or Cavallo and even in the writings of those opposed to its use, such as Kaldellis),
(4) new and more detailed (if this is what you mean by "analytically focused") spin-off articles on identity and social groups can be created, if editors think they should, using material from the identity section of this article for an article on Byzantine identity and the "Society" section, which has been moved to Demography of the Byzantine Empire, or, in the case of the latter, by just renaming it into "Byzantine society". Ashmedai 119 (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I think we are now largely aligned, with the remaining difference being about precision rather than outcomes. I'm aware of what other editors think, but we will need broader input, once we can come to to full agreement. Policy matters for consensus but so do the editors here.
My remaining concern is about scope and precision. While Byzantines is the common name, it is applied in English scholarship to multiple populations within the Byzantine polity, and modern scholarship does not agree on several foundational questions that bear directly on how the subject is framed: when “Byzantine” meaningfully begins, when the Rhomaioi can be understood as an ethnic group rather than a civic or religious one, and when Greek/Hellenic identity becomes a primary identifying marker. These are central debates in recent scholarship with implications for not just Byzantine studies, and usage of Byzantine cannot be considered neutral.
For that reason, while I can accept Byzantines as required in the primary title, I think additional care is needed so that this people article does not implicitly settle questions that scholarship treats as open, with significant minority views not requiring us to change but it also requires us to acknowledge.
Two substantive points first.
I am open to renaming Demography of the Byzantine Empire to Byzantine society, and there is another reason a stand-alone article makes sense. The Byzantine Empire article is currently about 9,100 words, with the society section alone at roughly 1,500 words. That section needs a rework for quality reasons and the article generally is missing an important section on the palace and emperor, which is flagged as a completeness issue if FA status is ever revisited. We also want the article to be at 9k or below words, to get it to FA. Reducing the size of the society section in the empire article is good, and the scholarship there combined will add value to the Cavallo-dominated society content we have been talking about.
I am glad you accept the creation of a separate identity article. On the title, however, I am less certain. Byzantine identity can refer either to imperial self-representation or to popular self-identification, and they are not the same thing. The Rhomaioi were the majority, but not the entirety, of those called “Byzantines”, and they also continued to exist beyond Byzantine rule. It's a notable area of scholarship. More critically, Rhomaioi is not only more specific but it is analytically useful across periods, beyond “Byzantine” such as "Ottoman".
More generally, I agree that there should be a single encyclopedic article on the people, Byzantines is common usage, and that identity, society, and culture belong naturally in that article. My preference is for summary-style treatment there, with separate main articles where appropriate which I don't think is a problem (but it is if the Rhomaioi identity is not distinguished).
The views of the editors in this talk prior to your contributions this year agreed that (a) Byzantines and (b) Byzantine Greeks is problematic but rejecting the (c) Greekness entirely is also considered a problem. There is also a recognition multiple ethnic groups formed out of this population. To me, a 'child' article titled Rhomaioi solves these problems. Its value goes beyond Byzantine studies but also aligns with with it, as there is consensus in scholarship it was its own ethnic group no later than the 13th century and so a notable topic. Is there a title of an article encapsulating Rhomaioi that you could support?
@Biz: Thanks for your response and apologies for this and future delays of my replies; once the holiday break is over, my free time is sadly dwindling. I tried to read much of the discussion that took place the last few months. I register that, per your comment above, there is agreement about moving "Demography of the Byzantine Empire" to Byzantine society, "Byzantines" to "Byzantines (disambiguation)" and that there is a "people" article with its title being "Byzantines".
You write that editors agreed that "rejecting the Greekness entirely is also considered a problem". I am not sure what exactly is meant by "rejecting the Greekness entirely". Do you mean deleting the word "Greeks" and similar terms from the title? Or, negating any relation of the Byzantine Romans with any and all things Greek? If the latter, I do not think that any serious scholar holds such a view. If the former, I do not see how it can be supported as compatible with contemporary scholarship. I quote an excerpt from a recent chapter by Stouraitis, "Byzantine History State of the Field and Greek Perspectives", pp. 45-6: "[...] the marginalization of Byzantium’s Roman identity is an issue that has fostered problematic or even [46] distorting approaches to that historical social order by both medievalists and Byzantinists across time—especially in modern Greek historiography where the image of a Hellenic Byzantium remained predominant in the twentieth century — one has to acknowledge that such approaches incrementally tend to become the exception rather than the norm in recent times". It is inadmissible that this "problematic or even distorting" approach be preserved and even promoted through the title of Wikipedia's article.
You also write that "There is also a recognition multiple ethnic groups formed out of this population." I should call those you hold this view to recognize the fact that *contemporary* scholarship, of the last say 20 years or so, especially those discussing "Byzantine" identity, uses the term "Byzantines" to denote "Greek"-speaking Romans, not other groups that were living within the Empire's boundaries. Having read the discussion above it seems needless to quote Kaldellis. I will only refer to Stouraitis ("Reinventing Roman Ethnicity in High and Late Medieval Byzantium", p. 70) stating that the "established consensus in the field [...] does not question the self-designation of the so-called Byzantines as Rhomaioi (Romans)". Per the field's consensus, the term "Byzantines" refers to the Rhomaioi, not non-Romans (Serbs, Bulgarians, Turks and so on). Wikipedia should be adopting this consensus.
You ask "Is there a title of an article encapsulating Rhomaioi that you could support?" I think that if editors think that the term "Byzantines" by itself, due to its (non-established) use to also denote non-Roman subjects of Byzantine rule, is in need of disambiguation, then this could be done with the use of "Romaioi" in parentheses. I've noted that, despite their divergences in other points, this is an option for which (if I am not missing someone) most editors who participated in the discussion above have at certain points declared themselves (Aetolorhode: "Yes I agree to Byzantines (Rhomaioi).", A.Cython: "Byzantines (Rhomaioi) is ok to describe the people of the empire from 330 till 1453 in a general way.", Biz: "Byzantines (Rhomaioi) makes sense to me.") My only proposal to ameliorate this would be to go with "Byzantines (Romaioi)", that is without an 'h', as this how I see e.g. Stouraitis writing the term down in his latest publications. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 21:50, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @Ashmedai 119 for the thoughtful response and for engaging closely with both the scholarship and the policy questions.
On transliteration, I agree that Romaioi is preferable, as this is the form commonly used in recent scholarship, including by Stouraitis and Kaldellis.
On the title itself, the difficulty with Byzantines (Romaioi) is a technical one under WP:TITLE and WP:PRECISION. A parenthetical is intended to disambiguate between topics that share a name, rather than to clarify how a subject should be interpreted. In this case, “Romaioi” functions more as an interpretive identification than as a disambiguator, which is why this formulation did not move forward. It's like Greeks (Hellenes), when instead Greeks (ancient) and Greeks (medieval) works.
One possible way to address both the policy concern and the scholarly consensus you outline is to reverse the direction of the title. A formulation such as Romaioi (Byzantine people) makes Romaioi the subject and uses the parenthetical simply to limit scope, distinguishing Byzantine-era usage from later Ottoman or modern contexts. This seems consistent with standard disambiguation practice and avoids settling historiographical questions at the title level.
If this, or a closely related formulation, is something you could support, I think it offers a practical and policy-compliant basis for moving us forward. Biz (talk) 23:21, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz, I honestly don't understand why you write that "“Romaioi” functions more as an interpretive identification than as a disambiguator". It seems to me that is limits the scope of reference of the term "Byzantines" to refer to Romans related/subject to the Byzantine polity and distinguish them from non-Roman populations that may be described as "Byzantine X". Moreover, it seems to me that WP:COMMONNAME dictates that the title should start with "Byzantines" -- till when/if it can somehow be established that the undergoing process of supplanting "Byzantines" with "Romans" represents the field's new consensus. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 I think the remaining disagreement is really about what Wikipedia means by disambiguation, rather than about the history itself.
The short version, because I find this confusing myself: Wikipedia titles should only use parentheses to separate different topics with the same name. They do not use parentheses to specify who counts as part of a topic.
I agree that “Romaioi” distinguishes Greek-speaking Roman Byzantines from other populations within the empire, such as Armenians or Jews. The issue is that, under Wikipedia title policy, disambiguation operates only where a term refers to multiple encyclopaedic topics that share the same name. “Byzantines” is not treated in title space as referring to separate topic-level groups (e.g. Roman vs non-Roman Byzantines), but as a single umbrella people term, with internal distinctions handled in the article content rather than in parentheses. In that technical sense, “Romaioi” functions as an identity classification rather than as a disambiguator of homonymous topics.
On WP:COMMONNAME, I agree that this is why “Byzantines” remains appropriate for a general people article, unless and until usage shifts decisively. My concern with “Byzantines (Romaioi)” is not that it rejects COMMONNAME, but that it combines COMMONNAME with an interpretive parenthetical, which is something title policy generally avoids.
“Romaioi” is interpretative in a title not because it is wrong, but because it answers a “who really counts” question rather than a “which topic is this” question. Wikipedia titles are only allowed to answer the second. So Romaioi (Ottoman period), answers which Romaioi, Romans (people) answers which Romans. Byzantines (Romaioi) the parenthetical answers a different question: Which Byzantines count as Byzantines? We are no longer selecting between two things called “Byzantines”. We are asserting an identity criterion for Byzantines. That is interpretation.
That is why I suggested reversing the construction. A title like Romaioi (Byzantine people) keeps COMMONNAME intact which respects “Byzantines” but with accurate grammar. Like how in Greek grammar, a word changes based on the gender/number/tense/case, we are still respecting the common name but in the context of the words used while allowing an identity-focused article to exist under a policy-clean disambiguation that limits scope without redefining “Byzantines” in the title itself.
I hope that clarifies why I see this as a structural issue rather than a disagreement with the scholarly consensus you outline. Biz (talk) 00:22, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Biz, you write that "Wikipedia titles should only use parentheses to separate different topics with the same name. They do not use parentheses to specify who counts as part of a topic." and present this as a reason to inverse the order of what you had found to "mak[e sense" in the discussion above] in agreement with other editors. First, could you please point to the exact location where what you claim about how Wikipedia titles should operate is stated in Wikipedia policy pages? I am checking Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and I am unable to find it. Thanks in advance.
Second, you write that "under Wikipedia title policy, disambiguation operates only where a term refers to multiple encyclopaedic topics that share the same name. “Byzantines” is not treated in title space as referring to separate topic-level groups". If it truly the case that "disambiguation operates only where a term refers to multiple encyclopaedic topics that share the same name", and this does not hold for the term "Byzantines", then there is no need for disambiguation, so "Byzantines" itself will do as a title.
Having said that, to reverse the order of "Byzantines" and "Romaioi" is actually tantamount to disregarding the topic's common name -- the common name is not to be included *somewhere* in a parenthesis of the article's title, but to be *the* article' title-- and also to going against the naturalness criterion, one of the five criteria for determining a title, that states: "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles". This is not "Romaioi", which in your latest proposal becomes the -albeit disambiguated- title of the article, but "Byzantines".
I am also at pains to understand how you can hold that to add "Romaioi" or "Romans" in parenthesis after "Byzantines" is supposedly an "interpretation", which is allegedly against Wikipedia's policy to interpret terms, while to essentially substitute "Byzantines" for "Romaioi" is not an attempt to put forward "an identity criterion for Byzantines", and an even stronger one for that matter.
I suspect that the title you are arguing for comforms to your personal views and your point of view about how medieval Romans *should* be called and presented in scholarship (which is frankly not an unreasonable position), but it is simply just not the name that accords with wikipedia policy -- Romaioi is *not* the common name, not the name readers are going to search for etc. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 05:51, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
PS. This further discussion does not arise at all with the title being simply "Byzantines" with no disambiguation at all (which should be acceptable, as this [=the Greek-speaking Christians] is the primary topic to be described by the term) or "Byzantines (people)", which for the reason I just mentioned, is already a stretch of WP policy regarding titles. Ashmedai 119 (talk) 06:15, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 Thank you for continuing this dialogue. This is how we get to a strong decision. I will try to respond to the policy points as directly and narrowly as possible.
On the first question, the principle I am relying on is not expressed as a single sentence in policy, but follows from how WP:TITLE, WP:PRECISION, and Wikipedia:Disambiguation operate together. Disambiguation is defined as distinguishing between different topics that share the same name (see the opening section of Wikipedia:Disambiguation). WP:PRECISION further notes that parentheticals are used to distinguish articles with identical or very similar titles, rather than to add descriptive or explanatory qualifiers. Taken together, the operational rule is that parentheses select between homonymous topics, not membership criteria within a single topic.
This leads to the second point. If “Byzantines” is not treated in title space as referring to multiple encyclopaedic topics, then I agree that no disambiguation is required, and “Byzantines” alone is sufficient for a general people article. Where I differ is since Romaioi is a bigger topic than Byzantine Studies and merits its own article, adding “Romaioi” in parentheses does not function as disambiguation in this technical sense, because it does not distinguish between two topics both called “Byzantines”, but instead narrows who is meant by “Byzantines”. That kind of narrowing is normally handled in the lead and body of the article, not in the title.
On WP:COMMONNAME and naturalness, I agree that “Byzantines” is the common and expected term in English, and I am not arguing that it should be replaced as the general people title. As I said, my concern with “Byzantines (Romaioi)” is therefore not that it abandons COMMONNAME, but that it combines the common name with a parenthetical that performs an interpretive or classificatory function rather than a disambiguating one. This is why similar constructions such as “Greeks (Hellenes)” or maybe its more illustrative with “Romans (Italians)” are generally avoided, even though they are historically meaningful.
Reversing the construction to something like “Romaioi (Byzantine people)” is not intended to substitute the common name “Byzantines” at the ecosystem level. Rather, it allows for an identity-focused article on the Romaioi itself, which can also be disambiguated by period or context. In that case, “Byzantine people” functions only as a scope limiter, not as a redefinition of Byzantines, and COMMONNAME remains intact for the broader people article.
This leaves the question of why I consider Romaioi an appropriate subject for an identity article at all, when “Byzantines” is the common name in English. The reason is that Romaioi is a self-designation that spans multiple historical periods. The term continues into the Ottoman period and, in some contexts, into the modern era, which means it is not confined to a single historiographical framework. Byzantine scholarship differs on when this identity can be described as ethnic rather than civic or religious, and on how and when it consolidated, but it is precisely this cross-period continuity that makes Romaioi suitable for treatment as a standalone subject, with disambiguation by period if needed (ie, Byzantine, Ottoman, modern contexts).
In that sense, titles such as “Romaioi (Byzantine period)” or “Romaioi (Ottoman period)” would represent straightforward, policy-compliant disambiguation, while allowing field-specific terminology (such as “Byzantines”) to be used contextually with those articles and through redirects where appropriate. This avoids flattening identity into a single period label while still respecting common usage in English-language historiography. There is no conflict with what readers will search for as we will set up redirects and use summary style to create associations, but we also do something more important, which is to get more precise and create a more compatible framework of how we should be viewing these topics. This is why there is a duality in my thinking that is confusing: I am ok with Byzantines as a general people article but insist Romaioi is a section of the article in summary style, as given its content could expand outside Byzantine usage, and so should not live on Byzantines.
So to restate this more simply:
If the population in question were confined to the Byzantine period alone, then “Byzantines” would be a sufficient and appropriate label for them.
However, the self-designation Romaioi continues beyond the Byzantine period into the Ottoman era and, in multiple contexts, into the modern period. In that sense, terminology developed within Byzantine studies cannot by itself determine how the subject is organised across periods.
This raises a distinction between (a) identity, meaning self-designation (Romaioi), (b) external names used in different scholarly traditions (such as “Byzantines”), and (c) the people themselves as a historical population. Treating these as analytically distinct allows identity to be discussed across periods without collapsing it into any single historiographical or period-specific naming convention. Or, if we segment the Romaioi by period, that is when the parenthetical should be used, as it is most appropriately employed to limit period or context, rather than to redefine the article title which I now understand is what the other uses did.
So in all use cases we make Byzantines the main article but there needs to be a separate article on the Romaioi which is either an identity article across periods or if we want to make it an article about the people who identified as Romaioi during the Byzantine period, it should be a title that disambiguates it from the other Romaioi and not as a way to classify the 'Byzantines'. Biz (talk) 18:38, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Ashmedai 119 Welcome back. The argument has been touched previously (I think here as well as in Byzantine Empire talk page) with some people raising opposition based on Byzantines being a disambiguation page and that could more damage to existing articles (if I remember correct). Personally I preferred a single article talking about the Byzantines (people) similar to Romans (people). At the same time, there was strong support for Anthony Kaldellis position that (I oversimplify here) there were no Byzantines in Byzantine Empire... actually there were no Greeks either, there were only a Roman Empire with Romans as its citizens. I do not share Kaldellis position (but my opinion does not matter), and I have argued that such position does not satisfy WP:DUE. At the end of the day, we had to reach a compromise as it is pointless to keep arguing. The above mentioned proposal was based on having the minimum damage to existing articles, while proving a framework that allows the creation of articles that can approach different aspects of the academic literature since there is no clear established consensus. If you feel strongly about it please outline your arguments (but please familiarize with the previous discussion). Since then I have been reading relevant literature to create a new "Byzantine Greeks" article that focus on the particular term and how it is used in the literature. Unfortunately, I am a little slow in covering the massive literature. If you can suggest some literature that would be great and greatly appreciated.
@Biz Well it did not take long for having another series of complains, this time from the other side. The cycle continues. A.Cython(talk)17:51, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Rhomaioi require a Byzantine + Ottoman period disambiguation
– To align with Byzantine scholarship usage (Kaldellis, Stouraitis use "Romaioi") and to better align with Wikipedia policy on WP:TITLE, WP:PRECISION, and Wikipedia:Disambiguation for articles of the same people but in different eras. "Byzantines" is common usage for the Romaioi during the Byzantine period but scholarship in the Ottoman period does not have as much consensus and in the modern era they are still called Romaioi (Greeks in Turkey) though this is more complicated. This is necessary as readers should not think of these are different people but as the same people in different eras. Usage of Greeks as an identifier pre-1821 (versus Greek speakers) is also not neutral as was debated before for Byzantine Greeks and is similarly an issue for Ottoman Greeks as multiple Balkan ethnicities emerged from the Romaioi Biz (talk) 03:55, 18 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting.TarnishedPathtalk04:59, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose First, while there is no consensus as discussed above, Kaldellis remains a minority and largely ignored by the mainstream (acknowledged yes, adopted no). Second, while I am still investigating and reading the Justinian period as a Byzantine Greek article is supposed (still working on it) to replace the deficiencies of using a title Rhomaioi that violates WP:COMMONNAME, it appears that there is considerable literature in the transition of Roman-ness in something else that later on morphed into the modern Greek identity, meaning that the current title might be a mistake. The suggested moves further obscures the established academic literature towards the opinion of a single academic who has yet to be adopted by anyone else. So no. Note that this action is considered a break of the consensus above given you agreed on Byzantine Greeks article. A.Cython(talk)04:16, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. If we don't have consensus to rename this, then we will focus this page to be an identity article like the previous proposal, and that can be incorporated into a future Byzantine Greeks article. However, we would still need consensus to rename this from Rhomaioi to Romaioi. Biz (talk) 04:51, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Rhomaioi is also used. You could search for it in google scholar. I don't know which is better. Furthermore, for the ottoman period Romioi (or Rhomioi) is more common than Romaioi. Additionally among the different ethnolinguistic groups of the Rum millet, Romioi was used for the greek speakers and/or the greek orthodox people (those following the Patriarch of Constantinople). Aetolorhode (talk) 17:45, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
There is no end with this insistence on continuity school of thought, as the next logical step is to move/rename Romans (people) to Romani for consistency reasons and then change the infobox of Mark Antony as Eastern Roman and Cleopatra as Eastern Roman or Byzantine queen. These suggestions create far more inconsistencies as pointed out by scholars and there is a reason why Kardellis unprofessionally lashed out to his colleagues, i.e., he is largely ignored by mainstream. Given that the consensus is broken the best thing is to move the existing page back to its original title or to either Byzantines (people) (similar to Romans (people)) or plain Byzantines by merging with the disambiguation page since this is by far the most popular per WP:COMMONNAME. Breaking the consensus but keeping the current title is inappropriate (and that's the polite way of saying this). A.Cython(talk)05:45, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Is calling these people Greek through the ages, not the reverse pattern of the continuity school?
If Romaioi (Byzantine period) is not accepted, because it disambiguates from other Romaioi or Romans, then perhaps the solution is to move the identity aspects of this article to Roman people as you said. If it's too long, then we do what I've long advocated, which is make this an identity article and let it be a section of the Byzantines article that pulls in other articles in summary style. And again, what I've advocated which is we separate names/historiography from identity from population. We can recombine them again in articles, such as a common name article, but we need to treat them as three different topics.
So I agree: Byzantines becomes the page, but this content is long form identity and merits being it's own article as Roman people is already as 8685 words, suggesting we make it Romans (Byzantine period). Biz (talk) 07:11, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that you do not want the "Greek" in the title. This much is clear. However, having anything Roman becomes problematic because we effectively pick WP:POV. There are three schools of thought and the two reject Roman-ness. My (naive) understanding is that the established common ground in academia (perhaps with the exclusion of Kardellis) is the use of Byzantine as synonymous of Eastern Roman and a signal that there is sufficient differences from the classical Romans. Your suggestion of Romans (Byzantine period) demands to move the Romans (people) to Romans (Classical period). My expectation this will not fly, since the latter already covers material from Byzantines creating overlaps and conflicts. The plain Byzantines is sufficient and it is popular (WP:COMMONNAME) as it serves the purpose of identifying the people (irrespective of ethnic origin) lived in the Byzantine empire and does the least amount of damage to existing articles. My 2 cents. A.Cython(talk)02:22, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If the Ottoman Greeks are called Romaioi in scholarship, why are we calling that article Ottoman Greeks? And as these are the same people but in a different period, why are we giving them a different article name here? If both articles are the same people with the same name, why does one periodisation of common name get to determine what happens over the other? If we can have a neutral title for this article, how is it a problem that we include it in summary style in Byzantines, Roman people and Byzantine Greeks which balances all the editor's views of what to call them? And if what they called themselves is the least biased way to name an article, and it is disambiguated with the common term, from the other article of the same people in a later era, why is that such an problem? Why can't that be seen as a creative solution to reflect the scholarship, create neutrality and address all views?
Is Romaioi more common than ottoman greeks or just Greeks in the scholarship for the Greek speakers or Greek orthodox people in ottoman empire?? Why is it more neutral? The same question for Byzantines instead of Romaioi for the previous period; is it more possible for a reader to search this people under the name Romaioi or Byzantines? Aetolorhode (talk) 10:03, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Before 1821, Romaioi/Romioi is more common.
Neutrality is picking a name that does not pick a side. "Greeks", "Byzantines", and "Romans" is picking a side.
The issue of what people search for is solved with multiple articles and redirects. We can do everything everyone wants as long as we have a neutral article that can embed into them.
Oppose for the ottoman Greeks into Romaioi (Ottoman period). Romioi is much more common for the ottoman greeks. Romaioi (byzantine period) is not as bad, but if we choose this, then why not Romaioi (Byzantines), or not just byzantines? The self-identification for byzantine greeks was romaioi/rhomaioi, which now is commonly referred as byzantines (which is even better title). As for the ottoman greeks, the self identification was either Romioi or Graikoi/Greeks. Romaioi (Ottoman period) is a really bad idea not helping at any point. Aetolorhode (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation is only to be used when there is another article with the same name. If we do not call any other article Romaioi/Rhomaioi, then there is nothing to disambiuate.
I think just Byzantines would be the best title for this article instead of Rhomaioi. The current Byzantines wikipedia page could be renamed to Byzantines (disambiguation) or merged to Byzantine (disambiguation). Ottoman Greeks could be renamed to Romioi, not Romaioi. Aetolorhode (talk) 09:18, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I did a quick scan of the scholarship. I see quite a bit of support that Romaioi. There's even a source in Ottoman Greeks Kakavas 2002, p. 29: "All the peoples belonging to the flock of the Ecumenical Patriarchate declared themselves Graikoi (Greeks) or Romaioi (Romans – Rums)."
Here's a few of the sources I came across
Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth: Nodes, Networks, and Spheres Jonathan Shepard (ed.), Peter Frankopan (ed.) p38
One problem is that in the last centuries of the Roman republic, Rome was already an empire. We can accept that Romanness and republicanism were parts of the Byzantine self-image, but they were not the whole of it. Identities are multiple, even for states; the fact that some Greeks even now might call themselves Romaioi does not mean that they do not think of themselves as Greek, and like-wise, as indeed Kaldellis admits, Byzantines sometimes called themselves Hellenes, or even Graikoi
Islam and Nationalism in Modern Greece, 1821-1940 Stefanos Katsikas
p54: In 1802 Daniil (1754–1825), a Grecophone Aromanian Vlach priest and scholar from Moscopole, present-day Voskopojë in Albania, wrote, “Albanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians, speakers of other languages, rejoice and prepare to become Romaioi [i.e., Romans, speakers of Koine Greek].”
p56: Writing in 1842, Sophocles Evangelinos Apostolides, a native of Tsangarada in Mount Pelion and the first tenured professor of Modern Greek in the Western world at Harvard University, claimed that most Greek Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire identified themselves by religion as Romaioi.
Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976 Peter Mackridge
p50: Konstantinos Koumas claimed that the Fanariots insisted on calling themselves Romaioi rather than Graikoí or Ellines.
p52: The period between the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth is marked by the transition from the ‘genos of the Romaioi’ to the Hellenic ethnos.
My issue with this Romioi vs Romaioi discussion is that it's like arguing "Brit", which is a contraction of "British". It was not a different name. It is incorrect to say Romioi, not Romaioi. Both versions were in play. Anyone who speaks Greek should know this.
Based on a search on the Oxford collection.
Romaioi:78 results
Romioi: 45 results
"Ottoman Greeks": 337 results. Reduced to 118 when you remove descriptions of "Ottoman-Greek", with the vast majority referring to after the state of Greece was formed.
Ottoman Greeks makes sense after 1821. My argument is that between 1453 and the Greek enlightenment, it is more appropriate to call them something else. Biz (talk) 17:42, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That's the problem. Your thinking that they need to be called something else is WP:OR! We are not here to write what we think but rather reflect how the literature as a whole deals with the subject matter. If the established literature says something that is viewed as wrong then we write that this wrong thing until there is a change in the established literature. Kardellis is nowhere near being an established literature simply because the rest of the community continues to use the term "Byzantine" everywhere. Unfortunately, the advancement of history is similar to the advancement of science, it advances one funeral at a time. This means we have to wait for some historians to reach their end of their life and see how the rest of them deal with the dead historian's work. It is a very slow process. In the meantime we restore to the established consensus, i.e., Byzantines, and we wait. A.Cython(talk)18:05, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As I'm the sole voice here on this view, let's move on and say the consensus it to rename this page as Byzantines. We can flatten the identity of these people with this specific historiography on the basis it's the common name, Byzantines. But keeping Ottoman Greeks is not the common name and it's original research to keep it named as such. As part of this decision, I no longer support creating a separate article called Byzantine Greeks and that should redirect to Byzantines. Biz (talk) 18:27, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Fine, no separate article on Byzantine Greeks. Though the proper thing to do since you broke consensus is to return to pre-consensus status, i.e., Byzantine Greeks. However, I will ignore this. A.Cython(talk)19:14, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We had consensus to move to page to Rhomaioi (endonym), on the assumption we make it an identity article that would allow other others to use it in summary style. We have identified Roman people, Byzantines, Byzantine Greeks (which also has a significant Hellenes identity component that could be said is different from the rest) that would pull in this article as supporting content, with Roman people already having a large section.
Ashmedai 119 challenged it, I then discovered it contradicted policy, we discovered Romaioi was the actually more common usage, and someone renamed the article to Rhomaioi as it is currently.
To solve the policy issue and more common spelling issue, when the most recent rename happened which I knew would not stick due to policy, I found the one appropriate way to use brackets which is when it's about the same topic. Given Romaioi during the Byzantine period and Ottoman period are the same people with a different political overlord and different period of time, I thought this would solve the issue.
We now have the discussion to move it this discussion to Byzantines, the Byzantine period common name. It's clear Ottoman Greeks is also not the common name,
So yes, I now see why you think Romaioi (Byzantine period) broke our consensus as this flattens identity and population with this title, when we had the consensus to keep those three themes separate. If we keep identity, population content and naming as three separate things, this is what enables a Byzantine Greeks article.
If we instead flatten identity and population with the title Byzantines, we are doing the same thing as what I did that you are saying broke our consensus.
My preference is to recognise the multi-dimentional complexity on this topic so that readers can have an informed understanding. Flattening complex topics (identity, other peoples names, and the people themselvs) as one thing is what creates unnecessary dispute. The fact that we can have atomic units of content embedded into other articles to respect debates on names and recognise complexity (the Roman, Hellenes and Christian identities of the Byzantines that evolved over different times), allows us to satisfy everyone's positions and create greater depth . But this discussion has gone on too long so and since you and Aetolorhode want to flatten it to Byzantines and you're calling this approach original research, then so be it. Biz (talk) 19:21, 22 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus broke with the adoption of Roman-ness beyond the narrow focus. Moreover, I discovered this Talk:Byzantine_Empire/FAQ stating that the established consensus in WP is that the primary descriptor should be "Byzantine Emprire" instead of "Eastern Empire", which as I understand also applies to its emperors and citizens. Meaning that whatever we agreed before was moot from the start. While I understand your concerns and they are valid and should be addressed in the main body, however, I fail to see these concerns tramping WP:COMMONNAME and other established conventions as this causes bigger and more serious inconsistencies. Insisting on (semi) universal Roman-ness in this article or elsewhere should come with the re-definition of Byzantine Empire or even merging with Roman Empire, but if this is not going to happen then anything else is moot and every related article should adopt the established convention, i.e., Byzantine.
Note that Romans (people) article has issues as it confuses the Latin people with citizens of different ethnographic origins, meaning it had bigger problems than having the current article as Byzantine Greeks. Merging with the particular article is also a no from me. This means and as you said the current article has a significant Hellenes identity component should be more appropriately returned to original version, i.e., Byzantine Greeks. Your words. I can settle with Byzantines but keeping the Hellenes identity aspect in. If you intent to remove such material then it can be moved to Byzantine Greek article that (for whatever personal reasons) oppose. It starts to appear to me that any attempt to move against previous established convention is a degradation of the current article that started nearly year ago. A.Cython(talk)17:47, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The disagreement here is about scope, not just naming.
Renaming this page to Byzantines would not simply retitle the article but broaden its subject. “Byzantines” refers to the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire in general, whereas this article mainly focuses on the Rhomaioi/Romaioi and the associated historiography.
Under WP:PRECISION, titles should correspond to the defined topic of the article, not a wider umbrella category. Moving to Byzantines would therefore change the topic from an identity/terminology subject to a general population subject.
This also creates overlap with other descriptive treatments of the population (for example a “Byzantine Greeks” article), because the same material would then be split across pages with unclear boundaries.
If editors wish to develop a broader population article under the title Byzantines, that can be done separately. For the present page, the proposed move creates overlap rather than resolving it. Biz (talk) 21:13, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Bingo! By insisting the removal of "Greek" for personal reasons you destroyed the scope of the current article (i.e., violation of WP:PRECISION) and it starts to appear you were pushing WP:POV & WP:OR since you support the activist Kardellis' position, which is by away from being accepted by the mainstream, I have yet to see any evidence on this. The current article focused on Byzantines or (if we include the hellenic identity) Byzantines Greeks, it is not on Rhomaioi/Romaioi as these terms are not used in a wide academic literature compared to Byzantine. I remind you that Talk:Byzantine_Empire/FAQ makes very clear that any deviation from Byzantine requires is violation of established convention, irrespective of scope. So if you want to start writing an article on Rhomaioi/Romaioi you are free to do so, but not by damaging an existing article on anti-national sentiments, because such position is discriminatory itself. "Byzantine Greek" is a well established term on its own right and more popular than Rhomaioi/Romaioi, see Google Ngram. So no Romaioi, no Rhomaoi, no Romans either since the term Byzantines exist to separate/distinguish classical Romans unless of course we are going to discuss the merging Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire and call Cleopatra and Marc Antony as Eastern Romans. If we are not talking about merging then the current article best have its original title or being Byzantines but keeping the Hellenic identity as this is integral part of Byzantine identity, after all the move of the capital signaled the future of the empire on the Greek-speaking domains. A.Cython(talk)21:45, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The previous move determined that Byzantine Greeks was not the appropriate title at that time. It did not establish that the article’s topic is the entire population of the empire, nor that Byzantines must therefore be the correct title.
Each move request is evaluated independently based on whether the proposed title matches the subject of the article. My concern here is simply that Byzantines describes the imperial population in general, while this page treats the terminology and self-designation (Rhomaioi/Romaioi) and its historiography.
For that reason the proposed move would broaden the scope of the article rather than just rename it, which is a WP:PRECISION issue rather than a continuation of the earlier discussion. I am not opposing the existence of a Byzantines article, only the application of that title to this specific page. Biz (talk) 22:25, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Each move is determined independently, yes, but not when one of the participants breaks consensus otherwise this creates bad precedent for bad behavior. Effectively it allows one to promise anything and once the move is done to say "so long suckers". Expanding broadness by violating the existing WP:PRECISION is not a justification. The current article was written for Byzantine Greeks, you removed the "Greeks" and then complain that it has too many Hellenic elements. What I see since last March is the constant deterioration of the article and I regret that I agreed to previous move. And given that the move was in violation of established convention, reversal is the only viable option at the moment. The Rhomaioi/Romaioi terminology has been established that is too niche to be include as titles in an encyclopedic articles; main text ok, but no titles per WP:COMMONNAME period. The more you argue the less respect anyone will have since this has been a blatant violation of trust. I will prepare a proposal by the end of day so that we end this endless going around of who did what. A.Cython(talk)23:26, 23 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
This talk page has seen multiple years of the same debate.
Moving it to Byzantines is the only one most aligned with policy. I don’t like that option, but it’s what this long set of discussions has made clear.
First, I agree that the best option for the current article is just Byzantines, since it is by far more common in scholarship than the rest. And of course Byzantine Greeks, Rhomaioi, Romaioi and Eastern Romans should be mentioned and be redirects here, since they are also used for the the Byzantines in scholarship. Second, for the Ottoman Greeks, I think Romioi (Ρωμιοί in Greek instead of Ρωμαίοι) is much more common in Greek scholarship (the majorithy of the whole scholarship for these people as they are not as famous as the Byzantines or Ancient Greeks in world history) and furthermore Romioi is their actual self-identification, Romaioi is more formal and earlier. However Graikoi (i.e. Greeks) was also used both as an exonym and an endonym during the period before 1821, and perhaps it was even more common than Romioi during the 17th and 18th centuries (and for sure 19th century 1821-1922). This is why I am not sure at all about Romaioi. Romaioi is more acceptable for Byzantines than the Greek speakers and Greek Orthodox people of Ottoman Empire. This is why Ottoman Greeks is even more difficult than Byzantines. Perhaps a descriptive title like Greek orthodox christians of Ottoman Empire or Greek-speakers of the Ottoman Empire (this is what Ottoman Greeks actually implies) may be better. Byzantines is the obvious solution for the current Rhomaioi. Aetolorhode (talk) 19:51, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I have already presented literature that presents the opposite so this is not going anywhere. Yes this is complex topic, but here is the thing. Keeping Byzantine or Byzantine Greeks as well as Ottoman Greeks etc provides a framework to explore the complexity and the different nuances. By funneling everything under a variation of "Roman" you oversimplify everything and can construed as WP:OR since this oversimplification is not reflective of the literature as a whole. I going to stick to Byzantine for the current article and no change to all others. A.Cython(talk)17:39, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I added a request move from Byzantines to Byzantines (disambiguation) at Byzantines wikipedia page. If accepted, then Byzantines can be the title of the current Rhomaioi page or at least a redirect at this page. Aetolorhode (talk) 14:30, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support, but also consider split/merge of Ottoman Greeks article. By the end of the Ottoman era, there were definitely Ottoman Greeks as a subset of the Rum millet. But prior to Greek nationalism it makes less sense to separate out Ottoman Orthodox Christian groups based on language—or if we're doing so make it more explicit per Aetolorhode's suggestion above. (t · c) buIdhe05:43, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The issue for me is, as far as I can tell, these refer to 2 separate groups of people. Ottoman Empire was organized mainly based on religion and less on linguistic ties, which only became more important with nationalism at the very end of the imperial period. Greek Orthodox Christians != Greek speakers != ethnic Greeks. (t · c) buIdhe05:33, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
After pointing out the previous proposed moves fail WP:COMMONNAME & WP:PRECISION and per nominator's admission, the title of the current article also fails the same criteria as the consensus for the current recent move was broken. Thus, a new proposed move is to be considered:
Rhomaioi → replace disambiguate page Byzantines
The links in disambiguate page: the first one is the current article, the second will be integrated in the current article, and the third as well. I am not aware any book calling the ancient citizens of Byzantion (the proper name, not Byzantium) as Byzantines. So there is no real loss in replacement. A.Cython(talk)05:08, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Typo in terminology section
There is a closing parenthesis ) which is not opened by ( in the first sentence of the terminology section. It is super obvious; frankly, I can't belive nobody has corrected this, in light of all the attention given to this article. ~2026-11089-21 (talk) 09:31, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for pointing this out. This entire article needs a review. Once the article title is resolved, that will determine the scope and, to your point, allow editors to focus on the article. Biz (talk) 07:43, 21 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal to end proposals
Since March there has a continuing pressure to remove the identity aspects of the current (originally Byzantine Greeks) article. Whether there were good intentions or not, whether for national sensitivities or out of fear of such sensitivities, whether the academic literature is changing remains to be seen. What we can do is to apply the established conventions, e.g., Talk:Byzantine_Empire/FAQ, and have a flexible/inclusive narrative to accommodate the different schools of thought of who are the Byzantines and their Byzantine Empire. Yes, it is an anachronism, but so is "Roman Empire" and the people called themselves Romani. The term Byzantines is synonymous to Romans, but it is used to distinguish from the classical Romans; the term beats any other descriptor over a wide range of margin, see Google Ngram. The crossover between classical Romans and Byzantines is debated as long as the field existed and at this point there are three schools of thought as I mentioned several times in the past, see here. However, Byzantine Empire article has the starting date of the empire as 330 AD. This resolves some issues but it also creates new problems as the population/citizens were not homogeneous, and given the long duration of the empire (330-1453) the population and identity substantially changed, making our task even more difficult. For example, the choice of Justinian's reign as the transition from Roman Empire to Byzantine Empire is more natural and it is supported by two schools of thought. Moreover, it is well established in the literature that by Justinian's time the Italo-Romans viewed the Greco-Romans (i.e., Byzantines) as not one of the same and even were willing to fight along with the Ostrogoths against the Byzantines and the same applies for Byzantines, who viewed the Italo-Romans inferior for having spent 60 years under barbarian rule. It is one of critical problems that the Continuity school has failed to address. Nevertheless, 330 AD is what we have and we will work with this.
My proposal follows the blueprint established previously by Biz, except that the title of the current article to be Byzantines or Byzantines (people). The former has the difficulty of dealing with the existing disambiguation page, but it is not that we cannot deal without some effort. The latter title is similar to Romans (people) and Byzantines (people) can act as a continuation of the particular article. I am in favor of the former as is Aetolorhode, it is plain and simple. Now specifically,
Close existing move request as not reached consensus.
Change the current article title to Byzantines or Byzantines (people)
Scope: The citizens of the empire from 330 until 1453, but without any ethnographic identity emphasis.
This allows for different articles of the various ethnographic identities to be developed, Greco-Romans, Italo-Romans, Goths, Jews, Armenians, etc., as before.
If Byzantines then we replace the disambiguation and incorporate the three links (one is the current article, the other requires a link to the population of the Byzantine Empire, and the citizens of ancient city of Byzantium will be a hatnote), which are pretty straightforward.
Separate article with the name Byzantine Greeks
Scope: To describe the Greek/Hellenic identity suppression in mid-period and eventual crisis (Forth crusade, etc) and revival in the late period, along the lines of the previous proposal. It does not really matter whether one agrees or not, this will be done as there is substantial literature on this topic as of right this is not covered sufficiently by any article anymore. The Rhomaioi#Identity will moved to the new Byzantine Greeks article to make the Byzantines or Byzantines (people) ethnographic neutral. It will also resolve the dispute tag as well.
I appreciate the continued effort to resolve this. This needs to be supported by tertiary scholarship. But before getting into that I could support Byzantine People as that's the appropriate use of the periodisation label. Byzantines is the common name for the people, but does this overrule "Byzantine" which is for the subject? Byzantines (people) does not meet policy as it needs to disambiguate another article called "Byzantines" which doesn't exist (unlike Romans has a lot more similar topics requiring it).
Regarding scholarship:
What sources support treating a subset of centuries as Byzantine Greeks?
More generally, is there tertiary scholarship that organizes the subject in this way?
By tertiary I mean broad overviews or handbook-type works that summarise the field. For example, the opening chapter of the Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium treats Roman identity as the overarching social category within which regional, linguistic, and religious differences operated. That makes me unsure that moving the Romaioi material out of the main article reflects how the literature structures the topic.
I am aware the post-1204 period is often discussed differently, but I have not seen tertiary works that define those centuries as a distinct people called “Byzantine Greeks.” If such sources exist they would be very helpful for evaluating the proposal. At this point I am mainly trying to determine whether the proposed structure reflects how the scholarship defines the subject. Biz (talk) 03:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I found another source. I've not read it, but it meets the definition of tertiary. It is The Romans: A 2,000-Year History by Edward J. Watts
I'm not aware of anyone doing a history this long and because it's narrative, it defines a standard we can align to
He ends the history at 1204. He says that's when the state stopped being Roman. This creates support for treating the 1204-1453 period different. Now whether we can link the people of this period as "Byzantine Greeks" that's a different matter, but this is what we need to justify decisions like this.
This maximalist definition of Rome results in a sweeping historical survey that spans two millennia, beginning around 800 B.C. and ending in A.D. 1204, when crusader armies, instead of invading the Holy Land, sacked Constantinople. The Byzantine empire endured for some 250 years more, but Mr. Watts maintains that because the crusaders “imposed their own, foreign ways of doing things” they severed the link between eastern “Romans” and Rome itself, a link that would never be restored.
The end of the Roman state has been debated since the beginning of the field itself. Was the move of the capital in 330 AD the establishment of a new empire? See Roderick Beaton Greeks, a global history pp 250-251
The inauguration of the refounded city took place with much pomp and circumstance on 11 May 330 CE.' The new city was an imperial foundation; one of the first institutions to be created for it was a Senate, modelled on the traditional aristocratic assembly of Rome. But it was not yet a capital. Constantine would make his home there for most of the years that remained to him. It was, of course, in Greek that the emperor named his city: Konstantinoupolis, or Constantinople, meaning ‘city of Constantine’. For the first time ever, and almost by accident, the Greek-speaking world had acquired a political centre, one that would remain unchallenged for almost eight centuries and would never entirely lose its symbolic resonance for Greeks thereafter.
Was the Justinian reign (legislative reforms, plague, destructive wars, spreading Christianity but further deepening differences with Church of Rome, just to name a few) transformative enough to consider the end of one state and the creation of new one? Was Heraclius first of a line of Greek-speaking emperors the beginning of a new empire? I am not surprised that another author presents an additional theory, i.e., the Roman state ended in 1204. Irrespective of the different theories as to when Roman state ended before the fall (at least we can agree on the end, 1453) and when or whether there was a different entity, i.e., Byzantium, our task here is to find how to best to call its citizens. I much in favor of Byzantines. I am not sure what you mean by overrule "Byzantine" which is for the subject? Note much of my search in the names, note that Byzantium is also the appropriate name of Byzantine Empire, the latter carries a lot of baggage (one of the few things I agree with Kardellis) not to mention that is by far more popular, see Google Ngram (but this is another topic).
The "Byzantine Greek" is used in the literature in different ways (as this is complex topic) to differentiate
between Greeks at different eras (ancient Greek, Byzantine Greeks, modern Greeks)
among the Byzantines by ethnic/language origin (Greeks, Latins, Hellenized Syrians, Armenians, etc)
by religion/culture, i.e., before and after the fall, "Byzantines Greeks" were the Byzantines who were not ready give up their identity and assimilated by the Italians or other European cultures. This of course created friction with the European humanists (as well with other Byzantines who were willing to accept the Church of Rome) during the Renaissance and later. Despite the immediate identity shock in 1204, not everyone was immediately open to accept their Hellenic past with open arms. Thus, "Byzantine Greeks" were those who insisted in the recent revival of Hellenic past identity.
Below I provide a few of the sources on "Byzantine Greeks" or/and talk about the social identity split Roman vs Greek. There are more but these I found intriguing.
Still, the works of these displaced Byzantine Greeks have never been explored in detail in order to understand with what strategies they identified themselves with the ancient Greeks and why they did so in the first place. By trying to answer these questions, this study hopes to contribute to our understanding of the sudden emergence of distinctive Greekness after Byzantium, especially in the Italian diaspora. Its intention is not to rewrite the complex history of Greekness after Byzantium, but to reframe it. It does so by finding an alternative to two extreme views on ‘Greek identity’. The one extreme is represented by the nationalist perspective on the Greek diaspora. From this vantage point, the Byzantine Greek intelligentsia in Italian exile present the very first example of ‘a modern sense of nationality’.2 The other extreme is represented by modernist approaches to Greek identity that try to correct the perennialist and essentialist assumptions of Greek nationalism and argue that Greek identity is the exclusive product or ‘construction’ of eighteenth-century nationalism.
Already before 1453 the Greeks had been divided over various Italian, Ottoman and even different ‘Byzantine’ domains, while the fear of cultural assimilation was particularly strong after 1453. It resonates, for instance, in the poetry of Manilius Rallus invoked above. Even so, to properly understand their rejection of Roman Byzantium we must not see their self-representation as Hellenes in Italy outside the context of what Richard Jenkins called the ‘external moment’ of identification, i.e. the way the dominant Italian target-audience identified and evaluated the Byzantines (see the Introduction, p. 17-18). The Latins welcomed the Byzantines in Italy as Greeks and not as Romans. From the ninth century onwards, westerners had called the Byzantines Greeks, long before they themselves eventually embraced the label in the fifteenth century (see esp. chapter 2, pp. 57-65). Therefore, while Byzantine Greekness was a radical innovation in Byzantium, it was the normal way to frame the Byzantines in the West. The application of the Greek rubric to the Romans of the East had originally been a means to deny the Byzantines’ claim to Roman authority. But from the end of the fourteenth century onwards, Italian humanists began to see the Byzantine Graeci also in more positive terms, namely as the representatives of ancient Greek language and literature from whom they wanted to learn. This enabled Byzantines to exploit to their own advantage the Greek rubric assigned to them in the West.
The division of Byzantines/Romans into "Byzantine Greeks" is very apparent in the late era of Byzantium, but it also apparent in mid-period (Justinian period) as another identity crisis took place during the Gothic War. Amory may not explicitly use the term, but the meaning is there:
Patrick Amory Ostrogothic Italy p. 180
Totila revived civilitas ideology in a letter to the senate in 544, also denouncing the Byzantines as "Greeks."133 In his anxiety, Justinian sent Belisarius back to Italy in the same year with a message for the inhabitants of Ravenna. Addressing both Goths in Ravenna and "Roman" soldiers, Belisarius offered to right the wrongs committed by both sides. The result, however, was that "not one of the enemy came over to him, either Goth or Roman." As Italians flocked to Totila's side, Procopius's rhetoric breaks down interestingly. By his own definitions, how could there be "Goths" in Ravenna, a city controlled by the Byzantines? How could there be "Romans" who were not on the Byzantine side? The context makes it clear that these "Goths" and "Romans" were Italian soldiers and civilians who did not favor the Byzantine reconquest. In this brief moment of crisis, we can see groups in Italy more clearly, as they had been defined before the arrival of Justinianic ideology.
Patrick Amory Ostrogothic Italy p. 313
The eventual failure of Justinian and his successors to retain the allegiance of Africa and Italy and finally, after Phocas, the Balkans, was partly a result of the inadequacy of imperial ideology to draw together the varied elites of new frontiers into a single homogeneous cultural, religious and political culture determined by Constantinople.
Patrick Amory Ostrogothic Italy p. 320
These Goths had become regional in a larger sense: they were by three definitions the army of Italy.17 For Procopius, Italy contained Romans and Goths, or Romans (Byzantines), Italians and Goths. But in his geographical survey, the Italians consisted of a variety of undistinguished provincial groups znd gentes: Calabrians, Apulians, Samnites, Piceni, Bruttii, Lucani, Veneti, Ligurians and Albani, the Tuscan peoples, Carnii and Norici. Beyond these were Siscii and Suevi, Dacians and Pannonians — and all these groups were ruled by the Goths. ... On top of these local allegiances, the changing and competing ideologies of secular and ecclesiastical institutions offered the history-laden names of classical ethnography as forms of cohesion. Paradoxically, the propagation of ethnographic ideology fostered not cohesion, but disruption. The competition of ideologies of community culminated in the twenty-years devastation of Italy that we call the Gothic Wars, during which individuals — who at their hearts held allegiance to their families, properties and professions — were forced constantly to choose changing higher loyalties, and to suffer for their choices. By the year 600, Italy was divided, but not between Goths and Romans. Both groups had effectively disappeared.
This is a revealing conclusion, the Italo-Romans started not only cease to recognize the Eastern part as Roman but also they did recognize themselves as such, i.e., Roman. Note that Byzantines also viewed themselves as not quite Roman either, they were not quite ready to admit for all sort of reasons.
So if you are asking tertiary sources, such as encyclopedias then no, they use predominately Byzantines (no Romans, Rhomaoi, or Romaoi). If you are asking books that have overarching themes, yes, but this covers one of the above categories. For example, Arnold Toynbee provides a discussion on the different phases of the Greek civilization (182 instances of "Byzantine Greeks" I only provide a couple, but has whole chapter about the Byzantine Greeks on what they inherit/kept and what not from Hellenic Greeks, e.g., things that did not kept: pagan religion, the concept of polis, etc)
Arnold Toynbee The Greeks and Their Heritages p. 5
Like the Jews and the Chinese, the Greeks have made images of their own past that do not correspond to the picture seen by emotionally uninvolved archaeologists and historians. The Hellenic Greeks idealized the war-lords of the Mycenaean phase of Greek history. The Byzantine Greeks were adulators of the language and the style of Hellenic Greek literature from the Homeric poems to the fourth-century-B.c., Attic orators inclusive, and they admitted into this literary canon the neo-Atticists of the age of the Roman principate and the Atticizing Greek Christian Fathers. The Byzantine Greeks also treasured the East Roman Empire, an institution which was their ultimate political heritage from the Hellenic Age. The Modern Greeks have not only idolized the Hellenic ‘classical’ Greek literature; they have idealized the whole of the Hellenic Greek civilization in all its facets, and they have felt a nostalgia for this image of it which they have created. At the same time, the Modern Greeks have cherished —or did cherish until at least as recently as 1922 — the ambition of resuscitating the East Roman Empire and making Constantinople its capital once again.
Arnold Toynbee The Greeks and Their Heritages p. 24-25
The Hellenic Greeks’ good fortune in escaping these potential legacies from their Mycenaean Greek predecessors stands out in contrast to the untoward effects of the corresponding legacies from the Hellenes on the fortunes of the Byzantine and the Modern Greeks. The Byzantine Greeks did inherit from the Hellenes the Roman imperial palace at Constantinople, the Diocletianic-Constantinian system of administration, the Hellenic Greek alphabet, and —preserved in this alphabet, like flies in amber— the pre-Christian Hellenic classics, the Christian scriptures written in the Attic koine, and the works of the Greek Christian fathers written in the same form of Hellenic Greek. The cumulative weight of the Byzantine Greeks’ Hellenic heritage was crushing. It was an initial handicap that goes far towards explaining the Byzantine Greek civilization’s premature collapse. Conversely the Hellenic Greeks’ escape from a comparable Mycenaean Greek legacy goes far to explain the Hellenic civilization’s relative success. ... The Byzantine Greeks have certainly been depreciated unduly by the modern Western representatives of a rival Christian civilization, and also by some Modern Greeks, who have wished to dissociate themselves from their own Byzantine past in order to identify themselves with their modern Western contemporaries.
Another book that talks about the issue of Greekness in Crusaders: George E. Demacopoulos Colonizing Christianity p. 11-12
All scholars of “Byzantium” are confronted with the challenge of what to do about political and cultural nomenclature when they write about their field. As is generally well known, the “Byzantines” never self-described as Byzantines and they only very rarely referred to themselves as Greeks, Graeci. The inhabitants of the medieval Eastern Roman Empire always described themselves as Romans. The Latin term “Greek,” Graeci, was typically employed by Westerners as a derogatory term designed to undermine the East Roman claim of Roman-ness. For a variety of reasons well explained by Anthony Kaldellis in his magisterial Hellenism in Byzantium, the Byzantines began to (re-)appropriate the category of “Hellene” at roughly the same time as the crusades, but the reader should understand that their appropriation of “Hellene” was, to their understanding, very different from the Latin smear of Graeci. Today, most scholars as well as popular opinion regularly use the terms “Byzantine” and “Byzantium” to refer to the post-Constantinian Eastern Roman Empire. Those words were first routinely employed by nineteenth-century Western European historians who sought to differentiate the “real” Roman Empire from what was, to their minds, an Eastern and Christian aberration of empire that came afterwards. The decision to introduce those new terms was not an apolitical one, nor was it innocent. But it remains the common parlance. And, for that reason, this book will repeatedly use the words Byzantine and Byzantium, except in those instances when it becomes important to convey the precise claim of Roman-ness in a cited text or when there is a need to differentiate between those Greek-Romans who were loyal to the successor state of Epiros from those who were loyal to the successor state of Nicaea. Moreover, for convenience, I will routinely employ the word Greek and Greeks to refer to the indigenous population in the region. I, of course, do so in a nonderogatory fashion, similar to the way that it is used in contemporary speech.
Overall, the literature predominatly uses Byzantines and Byzantium to describe the people and the state (Google Ngram demonstrate this for both terms). The reason is to separate the classical Romans (pagan Latins in Italy) from late period (Christian Greek-speaking in Greece+Asia Minor coasts). While there is debate when and how this crossover took place, it does not affect the established naming convention used in literature. I fail to see any reason to deviate from this consensus based on WP policies. As for Byzantine Greeks it largely depends on whether the current article needs to be ethnographic neutral, i.e., if so then the new article is warranted to cover this aspect of literature. A.Cython(talk)14:48, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate you sharing these sources.
No debate on the appropriateness for a Byzantines article as a general article. But the content of this article matches Byzantine Greeks as proposed.
My questions:
Do you propose "Byzantine Greeks" to be the common name for the Romaioi or Byzantines to be the common name for the Romaioi?
Are you advocating the "Byzantine Greeks" article starts at the Gothic wars and ends in 1453?
Patrick Amory aligns with Sviatoslav Dmitriev that an anonymous editor posted December 5th. This also aligns with Kadellis position that Romans became an ethnic group around this time, which is defined as when an outside group treated them differently. Based on your views of Kaldellis, would this make it a minority view? As Stouraitis is the only other scholar I've read discussing identity (and as a challenge to Kaldellis), and he defines 1204 as when the citizens became an ethnic group (once the state collapsed, which aligns what Watts says), do we treat that as the majority view?
Byzantines could be the title and Byzantine Greeks and Romaioi given as alternative names. The debate about when exactly they became an ethnic group could be a section of the article. Aetolorhode (talk) 23:48, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose we could do that, and then make the decision to split the content if it exceeds 10,000 words.
Personally, I think we need at least two articles due to the notability of the topics: the people during a time in history and the origins of the modern Greek nation. But due to the complexity and risk of wp:or, one article is safest. I just really don't like that we continue the problem of making a periodisation adjective a noun. Biz (talk) 06:20, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your questions, I hope my answer clarify the intentions.
My understanding of the initial blueprint was that the current article (former Byzantine Greeks and now Rhomaioi) is to be a general article (starting from 330 and ending in 1453) with no ethnographic emphasis, i.e., treating the Latin and Greek-speaking populations on equal basis, along with any other ethnic groups (Armenians, Syrians, etc). However, in the literature, there is an extensive body of work that focus on the identity tension in the Greek-speaking population group which identified more closely with Byzantine label in the late part of empire. Thus, if Byzantines is general and ethnic agnostic then a secondary article is warranted to cover (in a more narrow and specific way) this identity crisis that the forth crusade triggered. If on the other hand, we threat the Byzantines article as if it is equivalent/synonymous to Byzantine Greeks then there is no reason for such an article to exist, however, my understanding the general article was to be ethnic agnostic.
If there will be an article called Byzantine Greeks then its main focus will be 1204 as this was the epic center of the identity crisis. However, to understand the main subject a background section is needed, describing the various transformations since the beginning, i.e., religion (pagan to Christianity), administrative (loss of polis but gain of Roman citizenship), etc. The Gothic War was another identity crisis, as Amory describes it, but my understanding it was less shocking than the 1204. It made them question what it means to be a Roman without Rome and its former Latin people, but it was not shocking enough to start openly rejecting their own identity. Thus, the Gothic War will be part of the background necessary to understand the underlying identity tension.
It definitely looks that the loss of Italy made the remaining Byzantine Empire more ethnographically cohesive (and even more with the loss of Egypt later on) but this entails substantial nuances that I do not think it has been digested in the academic literature. If it indeed made them an ethnic group how would you call them? Romans or Greeks? We already had the early classical Romans as an ethnic group so they cannot be Romans. They were not Greeks in either modern or ancient sense so what the heck were they? I do not think there is a good answer in literature. The Byzantine Greeks is about the struggle of the Greek-speaking population in relation to their Roman-ness and their ancient past, having ups and downs. Of course, after the fall in 1453, it became part of nationalism and the foundation in *later* centuries for the creation of the modern Greek state, including the uneasy relation of modern Greeks with their Byzantine past (as a quote above described). Thus, the question of nationalism should enter only after the fall of Constantinople not before. I hope this clarifies things a bit. A.Cython(talk)23:49, 25 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If Byzantines is going to refer to the whole population and not the main ethnolinguistic group (i.e. the Greek speakers), then it would be identical to the population of the Byzantine empire. I think that most scholars when they refer to the Byzantines, they mean the dominant/majority population of the empire that was greek speaking, christian and self-identified as Rhomaioi. The point of renaming Rhomaioi to Byzantines was to align with the most common name, not confusing again the whole population with the dominant group. Rhomaioi could as well as Byzantines mean every other inhabitant of the empire, if we start examining again this path. Aetolorhode (talk) 00:17, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Byzantines is meant to be the whole population but not focusing on distinctions of the different populations but rather the relation of the citizens with the state, religion etc. The Greek-speaking population was not dominant population in the whole period of, as defined in WP, period from 330-1453. Say were they in 450? So either we are going to sweep under the carpet the Latin population for those years and accept the Byzantines are equivalent to Byzantine Greeks (as it is done in the majority of the literature per admission of Kardellis) or ignore the dominant Greek-speaking population and instead describe their identity in a separate article. My understanding is the others want to avoid the former and thus my suggestion for the latter. A.Cython(talk)00:49, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Even in 450 (and earlier) the greek language was dominant in the eastern roman empire, and the greek speaking populations the majority in the capital and the areas around her at least (anatolia, thrace, etc). Aetolorhode (talk) 08:42, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You know what i mean, before the invasion of the barbarians and the fall of the western part but after 330. The map clearly shows that there were more regions than just Greece and Asia Minor if we based the definition of Byzantine Empire as 330 AD. It might be a short period, but a period it was. The Greek speaking regions started to have a political voice with the move of the capital, yes, but started to become dominant with the loss of the west and egypt, which is why most historians start to use the term Byzantine more comfortably at Justinian'regn, i.e., the last Roman Emperor. The administrative divisions of the Roman Empire in 395, under Theodosius I.A.Cython(talk)15:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you mean yes, you are right that between 330 (new capital in the East) and 640 AD (loss of Syria and Egypt by Arabs) the Eastern Roman Empire was more multi-ethnic than it was after that. Additionally in Egypt and Syria Greek was the language of the majority only in the coastal and urban areas, not inland. Many military elits and emperors were native Latin-speakers from Balkans rather than native Greek-speakers up until Justinian. However the dominant language especially in areas like literature, church etc was already Greek, and the majority of the population in the capital and the surrounding areas were Greek-speakers as Justinian himself admits. Besides that, I do not know if the best term for describing these Greek speakers during this period as well as later is Rhomaioi or Byzantines. I know for sure that Byzantines is the more common name. Aetolorhode (talk) 15:26, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
With that said, I don't know if the current name Rhomaioi (even though less common) is better than Byzantines after all. I do not suggest any move. However I do not support the Romaioi (Byzantine period) and Romaioi (Ottoman period) combined proposition. Aetolorhode (talk) 15:33, 26 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If we have two articles, and call the Romaioi generally as Byzantine Greeks, we need something that can support this otherwise we are engaging in WP:OR. I've yet to see any scholarship that mentions Romaioi interchangeably with the Byzantine Greeks.
That said, I'm open to having an article called Byzantine Greeks as a way to distinguish Byzantines who became more adopting of a revised (previously pagan) Hellenes identity, as this is well documented in the scholarship. But by mapping Romaioi to Byzantine Greeks, we are also making a judgement call that the Romaioi before that were Christian Greek-speaking Roman citizens different from what they later became, and that now just gets confusing given they had the same name and the scholarship debates it still.
Confusing as it is, that's the conservative thing to do. But what do we call those Romaioi in the middle period? Further, what do we call the Greek-speaking pagan Roman citizens between 212 and 330 who were also Romaioi? (And to make the point clear, were the original Romaioi with a Hellenes identity and long before any historian uses the term Byzantine) Biz (talk) 17:51, 27 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
How about this.
Byzantines for the current article with no ethnographic emphasis (Latin Greek, etc speaking populations all together)
Byzantine Greek identity crisis for the secondary article to further narrow down the focus and differentiate from Byzantines as the premise of the article is not about a population group such as Byzantines.
note the definition of Byzantines by Stewart, M.E., Parnell, D.A. and Whately, C., 2022. The Routledge handbook on identity in Byzantium. New York: Routledge p. 199-200: Byzantine identity was then somewhat more than “Greek” and at the same time something else than simply “Roman” (in its classical context); this also the basis of accusation of Kardellis i.e. Byzantine is used to strip their Romanness just as political opponents did by calling them Greeks (Romanland, p. xii). Is Kardellis wrong here? Is this not interchanging with Byzantine Greeks, then I will start consider your position as non-constructive as it appears to advance WP:POV
I am forced to repeat this quote: same book page 210 note 24 Kaldellis reminds us of the “fundamental” confusions that arise from the use of Byzantine as a term, but I will use the term, notwithstanding these issues. Kaldellis, Romanland, ix–xiii. Dmitriev carefully sets out contemporary perceptions of what divides Greek and Roman. He observes that: “In cultural terms, therefore, the Byzantines were “Greeks,” as opposed to the Latin-speaking “Romans.” In political terms, however, the Byzantines were “Romans.”
the identity is related also with the Greek-speaking population being trapped (allied at times with both only to be betrayed) between Latins and Bulgarians (1204-1261) and later between Ottomans and Latins.
There is no WP:OR here, the OR that I see is the insistance of Romanizing everything beyond what is described in the literature. The alternative would be only Byzantines and I will add all the literature on Byzantines Greek identity. A.Cython(talk)19:17, 27 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You're calling my usage of the self-desigination and what many (see my survey above, but not all, I agree) scholars call them as WP:OR. I'm not pushing, right now, that we call the article title Romaioi.
The Romaioi had three phases of existence in this period of history: pagan Greek-speaking ("Hellenes") Roman citizens from 212 to Justinian at latest, Christian citizens thereafter, and then post 1204 citizens who adopted Hellenes again along with Roman and Christian identities. The scholarship debates they were Greek and ethnically Roman (similar concepts but different names) from Justinian's period (at earliest) to 1204 (at latest). What we need to do is respect these issues. Nothing I've said there is WP:OR.
It does not make sense to create three separate articles like that and you are proposing in creating a second article which incorporates two of those three which I'm trying to support despite you trying to cut me down every time.
Unless there is tertiary scholarship that directly calls the Romaioi "Byzantine Greeks" in the same breath, this is called WP:SYNTH. This is not me trying to be difficult, this is me trying to ensure we don't repeat poor practices, again. Byzantine Greek identity crisis I have not read anything that states this or would support an article.
With all that aside, and until we can do that, this is how I see it now. Byzantines and/or a second article which is what Ashmedi suggested Byzantine Identity and which your source uses are the only options. Aetolorhode supports one article, and given we may not have enough content for two articles and the issues that get in the way of all this, maybe one article is best. Which is Byzantines. We should also have Byzantine People as a redirect so that it mimics the article Roman people (despite Romans being that topics common name but it's used as a disambiguation page like we currently have Byzantines). Biz (talk) 01:33, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Ethnically Roman? No that's WP:OR big time as the quotes clearly show
Definition of ethnically: in a way that relates to someone's ethnicity (= the fact of belonging to a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions, etc.)
They were Greek in terms of culture, language, traditions, etc. Sure they may changed religion, but Christianity was not a Roman feature. They may have lost the polis, but this does not change them to anything beyond administration wise. Paying taxes does not change your identity (again this is radical position used by only Kardellis, leading Mark Antony or even Cleopatra to be Eastern Roman, as Theodoropoulos criticized him). Read again read the quotes that I provided. Your statement is in direct contradiction with them! Only in political terms they were Roman, and this is debatable for the mid and late periods. Now I am not saying that it was a Greek state/nation or anything like this but saying that they were just Romans is worse than saying they were Greeks. Because you imply to the casual reader that they were the same as the Latins.
Sources have been provided and there is a lot more as the term "Byzantine Greeks" beat in popularity in Google Ngram both Romaioi and Rhomaioi. No tertiary source that I know defines the Byzantines as Romaioi and the term is used to distinguish them from the classical Romans. Moreover the explicitly defined as more that "Greek" and other than "Roman". Why? Because they were different as the quote explicitly say! There is no WP:SYTH from my part. So far all I keep hearing the national sensitivities of Bogazicili (who had a track record of damaging articles even beyond this one) all over again. You have violated consensus to move the article on a title by pushing a view that is not accepted in the mainstream literature (it is predominantly Byzantines, not Romans, Romaoi, or Rhomaioi). You barely provide any evidence on anything other than circular logic, confusing terms, and pushing Kardellis fringe theory which is not only not accepted, but he unprofessionally attacked the Byzantine establishment for not listening to him. So no we go by the mainstream. And yes a tertiary source was provided (one which takes the whole historical arc) but you neglect its existence. If you do not read the presented evidence then why are you here? A.Cython(talk)02:22, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering if you have read what this current article covers under identity. https://academic.oup.com/past/article/270/1/3/8003752?login=false. If you read this article, it's clear this is a debate about ethnicity (and he proposed the middle period) which is a concept that has a claim to land and not just about common language and culture.
"The Kaldellis–Stouraitis debate essentially forms a field-specific iteration of the wider modernism debate in historiography." with the accompanying Note 14: "Averil Cameron points out that this debate is conditioned by Greek nationalist ideology’s construction of ‘Byzantium’ as the medieval Greek nation-state, with Stouraitis completely rejecting any possible basis for this, and Kaldellis almost reproducing the nationalist vision in negative, with Romanness (rather than Greekness) as ‘the most ancient national identity in all of history’."
the consensus is that ethnicity is a modern idea with scholars reluctant to say it exists before the 18th century and Pohl (who Stouraitis is affiliated with, and wrote about Roman identity) calling it dangerous before the 8th century (I'm suspect of his bias however). Due to the Greek revolution in the 19th century, scholars have to acknowledge that ethnicity exists for Greeks but the debate has not settled on this when it started. Hence why this topic is such a sensitive one right now, not just with us but with scholars.
Rename this page Byzantines and redirect every other name here. At different times, all of us have said this is the solution, including myself recently. We can cover the topics you want still there. But a second article is too much work to make it work, and you've lost my interest to keep discussing it. Biz (talk) 04:16, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
A single paper does not reflect the mainstream, and yes I read it long time ago. A professor or a debate between two professors does not either. We are talking about the academic literature of the last 100 years, not transient fluctuations in academic opinions. No evidence has been presented that Kardellis is part of the mainstream. Acknowledged yes, accepted no (everyone keeps using Byzantine). But you avoided the issue, if ethnicity as a concept is alien for the Greeks for the period (I can easily accept this) then how come you said "ethnic Romans"? Is this even worse, especially after 282 where anyone irrespective of identity (Latin, Greek, Slav, Syrian, etc) to be Roman? You do not wish to discuss this but I have to clean up, right!? Fine. A.Cython(talk)04:49, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
With your agreement, I will rename this article back to the pre-consensus state Byzantine Greeks. My attempt to resolve this debate just wasted everyone’s time and I apologise for that. Biz (talk) 06:42, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Let's move the current article to Byzantines. We shall see with the Byzantine Greeks later; I have lost the appetite to write it. My apologies as well if my tone was (way) off, but this discussion has been dragging for a year now and it desperately needs a closure. A.Cython(talk)06:48, 28 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
