The Byzantine Empire: the last period of the Roman Empire before its fall

In certain specific contexts, The Byzantine Empire usually refers to the time before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is also often referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire. During much of its history it was known to many of its Western contemporaries as the Empire of the Greeks because of the dominance of Greek language, culture and population.

The term Byzantine Empire was never used during the Empire's existence. The Empire's native Greek name was Basileia Romaion, a direct translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire, Imperium Romanum. The descriptor Byzantine was introduced in western Europe in 1557, derived from Byzantium, the earlier name of Constantinople, by German historian Hieronymus Wolf about a century after the fall of Constantinople. Hieronymus had taken it from the writing of 15th century Byzantine historian Laonicus Chalcocondyles. He presented a system of Byzantine historiography in his work Corpus Historiae Byzantinae, in order to "distinguish ancient Roman from medieval Greek history without drawing attention to their ancient predecessors".

The term 'Byzantine' was introduced in the English-speaking world by Sir George Finlay in 1851, in his History of Greece, from its Conquest by the Crusaders to its Conquest by the Turks.

Standardization of the term began gradually in the 18th century, when French authors such as Montesquieu began to popularize it. Before this, the Empire was described in the West as the Empire of the Greeks (Imperium Graecorum), since Byzantine claims to Roman inheritance had been actively contested by Western Europeans at least since the time of the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in 800, before that, the west always recognized "Byzantium" as the Roman Empire.