Constantinople - \'New Rome\'?

[Robert Vermaat]

I've just had a rummage on JSTOR, actually, and come across a 1947 essay by Demetrius John Georgacas with the apposite title The Names of Constantinople. Georgacas claims that the title Nova/Nea Roma was an official parallel to others like Alma Roma, Altera Roma and even Roma Constantinopolitana, but that these implied it was a second Rome rather than a replacement, so to speak. The first term, he says, was favoured by Constantine himself.
He also claims that Constantinopolis was indeed the official name of the city from its foundation on November 4 326, when the first stone was laid. He cites references in Coleman (Constantine the Great and Christianity, 1914) and Holsapple (Constantine the Great, 1942) to support this. Which leads me to wonder why a number of other historians seem to believe otherwise!
[..]
So would the old name Byzantium actually be abolished by the foundation of this new city? Or was Constantine's capital still officially called by this name, perhaps with some added titles, until his death in 337?

I think this nicely sums it up: what is a city named and what is it actually called? That Byzantium was 'abolished' as a name would of course only refer to the use of that name in official records. I have a feeling that the old inhabitants as well as a lot of the new ones, kept using that name – how else do we explain that it not only continued, but reappeared in later centuries?

The name ‘New Rome’ may indeed only have ben a title, almost a poetic description, which neither stuck as a common name nor as an official one.
In the end it’s the common man who decides what to call a city. Remember the city ‘Augusta’? or, as we still call it today, London? :wink: