Euphemia (empress) - New Royal Names

New Royal Names

Originally named Istok, the man who would become Justin I was a Thracian or Illyrian peasant from the Latinophone region of Dardania, which is part of the province of Illyricum. He was born in a hamlet near Bederiana in Naissus (modern Niš, South Serbia). As a teenager, he fled from a barbaric invasion, took refuge in Constantinople, and rose in the ranks of the army of the Eastern Roman Empire.

In Justin, the First: An Introduction to the Epoch of Justinian the Great (1950), Alexander Vasiliev theorised that the original name of his wife may indicate a linguistic association in another language, with prostitution. Vasiliev connected the name to the Latin word "Lupae" (she-wolves). While the word in its singular Latin form "Lupa" could literally mean a female wolf, it also was the epithet or disparaging slur for the lowest class of Roman prostitutes. The derivative Latin word "Lupanar" was the name of a brothel in Pompeii. Many of these denigrating uses may have origins in derisive comments about the priestesses of a cult of the Etruscan religion that predated the Roman, in which the deity was represented as a she-wolf (similar to Artemis in Greek Mythology), which would imply a quite different derivation and make greater sense of the choice of Euphemia, hence a euphemism, as an alternative name for the empress. The wolf, Lupa, who nursed Romulus and Remus is related to the cult of this wolf-goddess and the matrilineal, Etruscan civilization that preceded the Roman. Acca Larentia is another name for the wolf or the deity represented.

Emulation of the cultural hero, the religious martyr Saint Euphemia, may have had a more contemporary association and reason for selection as the royal name for the empress, especially given the religious changes taking place in Constantinople at the time and the apparent interest of the empress in the veneration of the saint.