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  • I feel like that wasn't nearly as interesting as the title promised. The stuff that I find fascinating about modern Europe against the Roman Empire is how it carved out the modern dividing lines in some areas, or seeded cultural roots that would become their own thing over time (the British being a pretty interesting one). But its all so long ago that all of the other influences that happened over time are probably bigger hallmarks than their Roman roots (like the British again, being invaded by the normans and vikings).
    by TheGRS
  • plus roads
    by gorfian_robot
  • My name is Roman (father was Italian born in Rome and identifies as a Roman) and I always find it interesting that people try to speak something that sounds like Russian to me. Never thought about the fact they might think I’m Romanian and are speaking Romanian!
    by r0m4n0
  • Romanian sounds like Latin, not like Russian :)
    by mircea
  • I don’t know, I do associate the name Roman with Russia just because the only Roman I can think of is Roman Abramovich.
    by coccinelle
  • Like others stated, it's more likely they assume you have e.g. Russian roots, as among Slavs that name is the most popular in territories where Cyrillic is the primary script.

    Romanian sounds way more like Italian than any Slavic language.

    by Tade0
  • Well. The Latin version of Roman is Romanus, which is believed to have descended from Romulus, one of the two legendary founders of Rome.

    The popularity of Roman in Eastern and Western Slavic cultures is likely due to the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. Roman is also a rather popular name in Spanish speaking Latin American countries (Román) and is not entirely unknown in Germany (same spelling).

    by inkyoto
  • Feel I should mention the Istro-Romanians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanians), a small group of Romanian speakers who settled in Istria (now Croatia) some centuries ago. Mostly gone now but one grandmother was from one of the Romanian speaking villages.
    by gedy
  • Depending on who's legal fiction you believe, the Roman Empire was only dissolved in 1806 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsdeputationshauptschluss
    by fhars
  • The Roman Empire lives on today. Turkey is the legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire
    by TonyStr
  • That’s the German Holy Roman Empire, not the classical Roman Empire.
    by trinix912
  • Neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire
    by Alles
  • You could just as well say 1922 because the Ottomans also claimed to be the successor to the Roman Empire, or alternatively 1917, because the Russian Empire did too.

    The more realistic alternatives are 'around 480', 1204 or 1453 :)

    by flohofwoe
  • If we include the word Latin, then we have speakers of Ladino (also called Judeo-Spanish) and Ladin (natively called ladino). The first is derived from Old Spanish and spoken by Sephardic Jews everywhere but in Spain where they were expelled from. The latter is spoken in Northern Italy, specifically in South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno.

    The names are funny just because you can imagine asking someone speaking a language derived from Vulgar Latin what language they're speaking (or writing), and them answering as a fish would when asked about the water.

    by 1-more
  • Besides Romanians, there are several more eastern european romance-language-speaking peoples ("Vlachs") like Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians. I think they might also deserve a mention.
    by muvlon
  • Talking about Vlachs, Welsch is a derogatory noun for Romance language speakers around the French-German border.
    by pm3003
  • Romanian is isolated now, but even quite recently there where languages forming a bridge between Romanian and the rest of Romance languages. For example Dalmatian, whose last speaker died in 1898. Now, most people think of Dalmatians as the dogs.
    by xdennis
  • "Where are the Romans now?" "You're looking at them." - Tony Soprano
    by runamuck
  • The citizens of Byzantium identified as being Romans. Interesting, many Greek Christians still did at the time that the modern Greek state was created. When told they are "Hellenes" they responded that they have always been "Romioi".
    by Gupie
  • I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta.

    Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.

    by 4rtem
  • There was a Roman recipe of what we call now burger.
    by Zardoz84
  • Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).
    by pm3003
  • If you feel daring, there's a group of people publishing ancient roman recipes up to Renaissance ones (and a bit later as well) in italian and English https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/recipes/
    by amarcheschi
  • Only loosely related, but on the topic of deep historical namings: Mayonnaise comes from, and derives its name, from Mahon on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic islands. That in turn is named after Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal Barca, "the" Hannibal who almost destroyed Rome. Mago was also a Carthaginian general, fighting alongside Hannibal.

    So whenever you dip your french fries in mayo, you are celebrating the epic struggles of Carthage and Rome from two millenia ago. Bon appétit.

    by rich_sasha
  • I'm a bit surprised that the "people from modern Rome" only got an honorable mention. After all, Rome still sees itself as the successor of the Roman Empire. When first visiting it, I was surprised to see the famous SPQR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR) acronym all over the place - on trash cans, manhole covers etc. etc.
    by rob74
  • I think the implication was a focus on the more strongly conserved folksy cultures and stuff. Whereas modern Romans are more... Italian. That having perhaps transformed to a great degree than others in the roughly two millennia.
    by anon84873628
  • when you see something histórical in Europe ask chatgpt if its something actually ancient that lasted until today or It was a xix century tourist marketing stunt made by the burgoisie
    by DuperPower
  • Senatus Populus ... Que Romani! The senate and people of Rome.

    Italy, per se, is a modern construct but the capital is still Rome and I think it fair to draw associations to the old empire.

    I love seeing the SPQR logo and I think it is a really useful link to the past.

    by gerdesj
  • Just wait for Hollywood to create a film about Roman mythology and not cast a single Roman!

    But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.

    by Insanity
  • Every modern law system has its roots in Roman one.
    by epolanski