Constantinople - \'New Rome\'?

[Nathan Ross]

Did Nea Rwma had to be an actual proper name or would a sort of...honorific title suffice as explanation?

Yes, it does sound rather like an honorific, or the sort of agnomen used perhaps in official panegyric or, as George suggested above, poetry.

But there must have been an actual name for the place as well, and if it was no longer Byzantium and not yet officially Constantinople, what was it? How would the officials at the dedication ceremony in 330 have referred to the place they were dedicating? :-)

One possible other problem with 'New Rome' is that it implies an equality between the old city and the new, whereas, at least at first, Constantinople seems to have been rather junior - with a less privileged senate, for example. Although that doesn't seem to have stopped Constantine from living there or holding his trecennalia there in 336; perhaps its status as official 'imperial residence' (as Nicomedia, Mediolanum, Sirmium and various other places had been before) compensated for its less exalted position as second capital?