The death of Theodosius I in 395 was followed by the division of the empire between his two sons. The Western Roman Empire disintegrated into a mosaic of warring Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century, effectively making the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople the Greek-speaking successor to the classical Roman Empire. To distinguish it from its predominantly Latin-speaking predecessor, historians began referring to the empire as "Byzantine", after the original name of Constantinople, Byzantium. Despite this, the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire continued to regard themselves as Romans, or Romaioi, until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
