Is it common for historians to refer to historical states by completely different names than what they were known as at the time(e.g. referring to the medieval Roman Empire as the "Byzantine" Empire)?

by AccomplishedBuffalo5

Did the Ottoman Empire's inhabitants refer to it as such? Did medieval Germans think of themselves as part of the "Holy Roman Empire"? What about the various Chinese dynasties?

kaiser_matias

I'll also give an example that most people still do and don't even realize they are doing it: the Soviet Union being referred to simply as "Russia" (and conversely the Soviet people being called "Russians").

The Soviet Union largely replaced the Russian Empire (really only losing Finland and Poland), and was of course dominated by Russia (in terms of geography, population, language, and political power). But the Soviet Union was specifically not Russia, nor did it pretend to be. As the full name of the state (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) suggests, it was a union of republics, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was just one (of 15 by the dissolution in 1991). And while ethnic Russians were roughly 50% of the population (50.8% in the 1989 census, the last in the USSR), there were still literally tens of millions of non-Russians: Ukrainians, Georgians, Tajiks, Tatars, and roughly one hundred other ethnic groups (the numbers differed throughout the life of the USSR as what constituted an ethnic group was changed, often for political reasons). To call Olexei Bondarchenko from Kyiv, or Giorgi Ivanishvili from Tbilisi (both made up names) Russian would have been like calling Angus McCloud from Edinburgh English: it was completely wrong, and bordering on offensive.

And yet the USSR was commonly referred to as Russia throughout its existence. Not just by historians or writers, but even by the highest powers in the West: Both Churchill and Reagan referred to "Soviet Russia", while Eisenhower referred to "Russia" in his famous "The Chance for Peace" speech, for example. In sports as well, it was common to refer to the "Russians" at the Olympics and in other sports (in particular Canadians like to talk about playing the "Russians" in international hockey tournaments; while nearly all Soviet players were Russian, they did have the odd non-Russian on the team).

This is even more interesting when you consider that arguably the most famous leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, wasn't even a Russian: he was born Iosef Jughashvili in what is now Georgia, and identified as a Georgian for most of his early life (even in later age, when he wanted to promote a Soviet identity, he did not attempt to downplay his background). And it's worth noting that two of his successors, Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko, all had some Ukrainian ancestry (Nikita Khrushchev grew up in Ukraine but was ethnically Russian). Lenin as well was well-known during his life for likely having Kalmyk (and possibly Jewish) ancestors, though that has never been confirmed.

Other early Bolshevik leaders were also all notably non-Russian: a high number of them were Jewish, with Leon Trotsky being the most notable; Anastas Mikoyan was an ethnic Armenian; Lavrenti Beria and Sergo Ordzhonikidze were both Georgian; and so on. It was quite a multi-ethnic leadership, and the state they created reflected this.

So while Russia may have been the "first among equals" (to steal the phrase) among the Soviet states, it is not right to call the whole USSR that; it would be like calling the United States "California" or "New York" or something.

reproachableknight

With regards to the Holy Roman Empire, its very difficult to say when it began. A lot of the time, including on wikipedia and in a lot of school textbooks and popular histories, you'll hear that it was founded by Charlemagne when he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800. What exactly this event meant has been heavily debated ever since the Middle Ages itself, when it figured prominently in the polemics that raged from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries over whether or not the pope could claim superior authority (in both spiritual and secular matters) to that of the emperor. We can't really know what Pope Leo's motives for crowning Charlemagne were, but what is clear is that the power and authority of the Roman papacy at this time was very weak and it desperately needed a strong-armed protector on side - Leo's predecessor, Pope Zachary (d.752), had allowed Charlemagne's father, Pepin the Short (d.768), to depose the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, in 751 and receive a papal coronation as king of the Franks in return for militarily intervening in Italy on the side of the papacy against the hostile Lombard kingdom. Charlemagne's biographer, friend and courtier, Einhard (770 - 840), was probably not being strictly truthful when he claimed that Charlemagne was reluctant to be crowned emperor, but it doesn't seem like Charlemagne saw this as any kind of new beginning. Almost all of Frankish imperial expansion had already happened by that point - the last major expansionist war had been the Pannonia (modern day Hungary) campaign of 795 - 796 that resulted in the destruction of the Avar Khaganate, and the practice of annual spring campaigns against external enemies that had been going on for the last 75 years under Charles Martel, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne himself was largely discontinued thereafter. Almost all Carolingian warfare against external enemies after 800 was essentially defensive - punitive raids against the Bretons to the west, the Caliphate of Cordoba's frontier emirates and the Lombard duchies to the south and Slavic tribes to the east, and of course attempts to counteract the growing Viking threat from the north. Nor did Charlemagne's coronation really signal any real change in government and ideology - the ambitious and wide-reaching programme of administrative, religious and educational reforms that historians since the 1840s have called "The Carolingian Renaissance" had already begun in 789 with the royal edict known as the Admonitio Generalis, which also laid out succinctly Charlemagne's ideology of government. There, he claimed to be a "new Josiah" personally responsible for the moral health and salvation of his subjects, who needed to embark on a programme of correctio (restoration of right order in the world). Kingship and government under Charlemagne and his successors was very much rooted in Old Testament models, arguably much more so than those of the ancient Roman empire or its still-surviving eastern half centred in Constantinople. Its possible that Charlemagne just saw his title as Roman Emperor in the West as simply being a personal accolade, a literal crowning glory of his achievements, and quite revealingly when he drew up a plan for how to divide his territories - stretching from the Pyrenees to the Elbe and from the North Sea to Rome itself - between his three surviving adult sons in 806, he included no clause as to what was going to happen to the imperial title itself. In the end, only one of Charlemagne's sons, Louis the Pious (778 - 840), outlived him and this ensured that Charlemagne's territories remained intact for another generation and the survival of the imperial title. Overall, it seems pretty clear that Charlemagne's coronation in 800 didn't mark the beginning of a new, self-conscious imperial polity.

After the death of Emperor Louis the Pious, a civil war ensued between his sons that resulted in the famous Treaty of Verdun in 843, in which they divided the empire between the three of them. However, the imperial title continued to be held by the descendants of the eldest of the three sons, Lothar (795 -855), who was given the middle kingdom, until the death of Emperor Louis II, who reigned as king in Italy, in 875. After that, Louis II's uncles, King Charles the Bald of West Francia (France) and King Louis the German of East Francia (Italy) briefly fought over it and in the end the imperial title was secured for Louis the German's line. Louis the German's son, Charles the Fat, managed to unify all of the former Carolingian territories under his rule by 884 after a series of dynastic accidents, but died childless of a stroke while facing rebellions in East Francia in 888. From that point on, the imperial title, which really was at this point ljust a badge of prestige, was fought over in Italy by various kings and magnates, some of whom were only distantly related to the Carolingians. After the death of the 79 year old emperor and king of Italy, Berengar I, who was a grandson of Louis the Pious through his mother Gisela, in 924 after a highly troubled 9 year reign, the imperial title was left completely vacant until 962 when ...

Otto the Great (r.936 - 973), the king of East Francia, after having been acclaimed by his troops as a "new Caesar" when he decisively defeated the Magyars at the Lechfeld in 955, ousted the erstwhile King of Italy, Berengar II, and was crowned emperor by Pope John XII. Now Otto's family, the Liudolfing or Ottonian dynasty, who had been reigning in East Francia (Germany) since 919 had developed this exciting new practice - rather than following the ancient Frankish custom, going back to the early Merovingians, of dividing the kingdom between all of the king's surviving sons (or male collateral relatives in the absence of sons) the kingdom would be indivisible and the kingship would be decided by election, though that election would take place in the lifetime of the previous king to ensure that the king's eldest legitimate son got elected. One could interpret this as being the first step towards an idea of an abstract impersonal state (as opposed to the state simply being the patrimony of the king/ the reigning dynasty) and kingship as an office. Thus Otto the Great was succeeded as King of East Francia (which was increasingly coming to be known as the regnum Theutonicorum or the kingdom of the Deutscher/ the Germans) and Italy and as emperor by his son Otto II (d.983) and his grandson Otto III (d.1002), who was then succeeded by his cousin Henry II (d.1024), from a junior branch of the Liudolfing/ Ottonian family. Under Otto III new ideas developed about emperorship, including a revival of neo-Roman ideas (Otto tried to make Rome his capital and modelled his court on that of the East Roman emperors in Constantinople) but also an increased sense of the emperor as a religious and spiritual figure and as the leading authority in Christendom - Otto III elevated Gniezno in Poland to an archbishopric, may have crowned Boleslaw the Brave as king of Poland and played a decisive role in converting the Magyars (Hungarians) to Christianity. This ideas, of the emperor as a religious as well as secular figure and as the highest authority in Christendom, continued to develop under Henry II and under the Salian dynasty (1024 - 1125) that succeeded him. There was also a more solid sense of the Empire as an enduring and coherent territorial entity that included Germany, Italy and, after Emperor Conrad II conquered it in 1032, Burgundy (modern day Switzerland and the Franche Comte, Rhone-Alpes and Provence regions of France), for which the discontinuation of the ancient Frankish inheritance practices mentioned earlier combined with the crown lands and imperial regalia (rights of jurisdiction) being treated as belonging to the head of state (the reigning legitimate emperor) rather than a particular family must have helped. However, there wasn't much of a a sense of a common imperial identity. Germans, Italians and Burgundians had a strong sense of each other being different, and these identities were themselves very fragmented - a count from Bavaria would most likely identify as a Bavarian, a knight from Swabia a Swabian, a peasant from Lorraine as a Lotharingian and so on. And this entity was not yet known as the Holy Roman Empire - until 1182, documents from the imperial chancery simply referred to it as the empire, and its rulers were known as rex Romanorum (king of the Romans), once they were elected but before they had their papal coronation in Rome, and imperator (emperor), once they were crowned.

NutBananaComputer

So the case of China is really mostly a matter of being an exonym - simply put it's not a word in any Chinese language. 中國 (traditional)/中国(simplified) is the most common name for China, and is an old term that in Putonghua is pronounced "Zhōngguó" (the "zh" is pretty close to a "j" in English). The term "China" in English is quite modern and drawing it back to some ultimate origin gets kind of murky (the general consensus is that it draws back to the "Qin" dynasty, though there are alternatives (Geoff Wade proposes that it derives from an older word for "Yelang", source).

Usually the people of China would refer to the country that currently ruled them by the name of the current dynasty, which sometimes historians will follow by talking about "the Han state" and "the Sui state," which is also something of a reflection that the different dynasties could have pretty recognizable government-scale signatures (e.g. Yuan governance is immediately and obviously different in how pro-merchant it was).

However, there was still a need to discuss the trans-dynastic phenomena, because if nothing else comparing dynasties was an important part of the discourse basically as long as we have Chinese philosophy (as in, literally centuries before the Qin existed). Zhongguo was already mentioned, and was an old term by the time of Confucius, dating back as early as 1000BCE when it's used on the He zun (forgive me, I do not know how to cite a 3000 year old pot). It starts being used as a formal term for foreign relations in the Qing dynasty (it is worth noting that pre-Qing dynasties don't really have recognizable foreign relations - acknowledgment of any peer state was irregular and tended to involve a lot of discontent, hand-wringing, and philosophical arguments). The reply to me by Enclaved Microstate goes into significantly greater and more interesting depth

中國 means "Middle State," which you may recognize as "Middle Kingdom," and is generally pretty dominant, but there also exists stuff like 華夏 (traditional, "Beautiful Grandness") from the Spring & Autumn Annals, 天朝 ("Celestial Empire" or "Heavenly Kingdom," unsurprisingly has religious significance), and 九州 ("Nine States," yes that is also the name of the Japanese island of Kyushu, I don't know if there's any conflict over that specifically). AFAIK these terms are used in a kind of literary/affective way (think like 'The United States' and 'America' and ''Merica'), but I've pretty much only encountered them in very, very old writings.

A further wrinkle is the question of demonyms. The most common demonyms for the majority Chinese people are 漢 "Han" and 唐 "Tang," which refer to two of the most popular dynasties in Chinese history - there's actually a rather neat geographic split here, where "Han" is more popular in the north and "Tang" in the south, as the older Han dynasty had much looser, lighter presence in the south than the later Tang (thought the Tang to be fair are still pretty northern focused among dynasties).

And then of course there's the issue of particularism - in English we usually refer to the majority as "Han" following the putonghua, but there are many, many other ethnic groups in China that didn't necesarily percieve the central government the same way. A classic and obvious case is that the Qing Emperor would send out art that suited local tastes in dramatic ways - e.g. deliberately relating the Emperor to a Boddhisattva when talking to Tibetans, which is very at odds with the theory of government that they'd use for either Manchu or Han subjects.

So overall, no the people of China would not refer to it as "China" in the vast majority of Chinese history. China and Chinese are English terms that correspond to a messy constellation of terms in Chinese history.

Esherick, Joseph (2006). "How the Qing Became China". Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hansen, Valerie. *The Open Empire." ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Second edition (January 22, 2015)

Wade, Geoff (May 2009). "The Polity of Yelang and the Origin of the Name 'China'". Sino-Platonic Papers. 188.

reproachableknight

In the end, a proper imperial identity was never realised due to various factors, but as recent scholarship by historians like Len Scales - see his essay 'Late Medieval Germany: an under-stated nation?' in Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (eds) "Power and the Nation in European History" (2009) - has shown, as Italy and Burgundy almost completely slipped from the emperors' grasp after 1250 and the political situation in Germany became much more fragmented, with imperial authority weakening significantly, a fairly strong sense of national identity developed in the German kingdom, at least in a cultural if not quite a political sense. What can be considered to be something of a recognition of this was how, from 1508, the Holy Roman Empire was referred to as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. And over the course of the late medieval and early modern periods, the Holy Roman Empire's internal structures and institutions became much more formalised to the point that some revisionist historians, like Tim Blanning in "The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648 - 1815" (2008), have argued that in the late eighteenth century, when the Holy Roman Empire was famously mocked as a non-entity by satirists like Voltaire as a non-entity, the empire's institutions were actually working better than ever before. And when Emperor Francis II abolished the imperial title in 1806 to prevent Napoleon Bonaparte from crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor, people definitely did notice that a concrete political entity had indeed come to an end.