Roman identity had existed for over one thousand years when the Empire collapsed in the 5th century. However, in only circa 200 years there seems to be almost nobody left in Italy still using Roman naming traditions, recording their gens and identifying as roman.
I was wondering why this was the case since there are many people that retained their cultural identity after being conquered, having seen their homeland shatter or even migrated.
I’ve read that Italy was very depopulated but was it to the point that the migrating Germanic peoples outnumbered the former Roman population in Italy?
Edit: grammar
Follow-up or corollary question: did the non-upper-class citizens of Italy identify as Roman during the Empire, or did they primarily retain some more local identity? Is the idea of a Roman 'nationality' an anachronism?
While there's a lot more that can be said, the fundamental issue is that the concept of "Roman-ness" was more a legal or social designation. The Romans had a fundamentally different understanding of identity than our modern conception born largely out of 19th century nationalism. I wrote a bit on the development of Italian-ness in this post which you might be interested in. There's certainly more that can be added, especially regarding the post-roman transformation.
This is also kind of a question, but I thought many did still view themselves as Romans even after the Empire had fallen? Is that not the case?