[BroJoeK]

quam1: "Ummmm, the Roman Empire ended in 479 and was well on it's way out, long before Justinian."

kabumpo: "Justinian was in Byzantium, the eastern part of the empire that lasted longer."

Verginius Rufus: "Justinian was from near Skopje in the present-day Republic of Macedonia--one of the last emperors who spoke Latin as his first tongue..."

Just to be clear, here is the old Roman Empire at its peak, 2nd Century AD:

And here is the new Eastern Roman Empire (possibly exaggerated?), at its peak under Justian, 6th century AD:

The Eastern Empire fell in 1453, and now, as the song says:

"So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks"

;-)

[muawiyah]

When Diocletian SPLIT the Roman Empire, he took the Eastern Half.

BTW, he built his retirement palace in SPLIT which is right there where he SPLIT the empire.

For unaccountable reasons the on-line dictionaries trace the word origin to 1500s Dutch.

I suspect it's far older than that ~