Rhomaioi survived the 1453 Fall of Constantinople, the end of the Byzantine Empire, as the primary self-designation for the Christian Greek-speaking inhabitants in the new Turkish Ottoman Empire.
The popular historical memory of these Rhomaioi was not occupied with the glorious past of the Roman Empire of old or the Hellenism in the Byzantine Empire but by legends of the fall and loss of their Christian homeland and Constantinople, such as the myth that the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (who had died fighting the Ottomans at Constantinople in 1453), would one day return from the dead to reconquer the city.

In the early modern period, an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker who was not a member of the military-administrative class would often refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı ("Ottoman") nor as a Türk ("Turk"), but rather as a Rūmī (رومى‎), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia.
The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond.
As applied to Ottoman Turkish-speakers, this term began to fall out of use at the end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today.
Rhomaioi survived the 1453 Fall of Constantinople, the end of the Byzantine Empire, as the primary self-designation for the Christian Greek-speaking inhabitants in the new Turkish Ottoman Empire. The popular historical memory of these Rhomaioi was not occupied with the glorious past of the Roman Empire of old or the Hellenism in the Byzantine Empire but by legends of the fall and loss of their Christian homeland and Constantinople, such as the myth that the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (who had died fighting the Ottomans at Constantinople in 1453), would one day return from the dead to reconquer the city.
In the early modern period, an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish-speaker who was not a member of the military-administrative class would often refer to himself neither as an Osmanlı ("Ottoman") nor as a Türk ("Turk"), but rather as a Rūmī (رومى‎), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish-speakers, this term began to fall out of use at the end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today.
Roman people