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Dogmantra wrote

Reply to comment by hollyhoppet in fucked up that i'm learnin about shenzhen just now by twovests

it was, that's the point of my rant :p

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hollyhoppet wrote

wait so "but we name them after the name of their capital city that they never used" sarcasm? I'm confused. Didn't Constantinople used to be called Byzantium, meaning they named it after that? I'm just having trouble parsing the language here.

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Dogmantra wrote (edited )

oh sorry, I meant they never used the name, they definitely used the city!

I mean of course they called it byzantium when it was called that, but it was changed to constantinople when constantine upgraded it to the new capital, so it was never called byzantium during its big role in the empire if you get me.

My point is that calling the Eastern Romans "Byzantines" is a bit like calling people from France "Gauls". Like, yeah that is where Gaul was physically located, but the modern nation of France is a different thing.

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