Arabia (daughter of Justin II)

Arabia (Greek: Ἀραβία; fl. 565) was the only recorded daughter of Byzantine emperor Justin II (r. 565–578) and his empress Sophia.

While mentioned in several primary sources, her name is only recorded in the Patria of Constantinople. The name is generally accepted as genuine, though Cyril Mango has raised some doubts in his works.

Shahîd's Byzantium and the Arabs in the sixth century (1995) examines the implications of her name. Arabia appears to be a unique personal name, and she seems to have been named for the Arabian Peninsula. The poem In laudem Justini minoris ("In praise of the younger Justin") by Flavius Cresconius Corippus, a primary source for the coronation of her father, notes its difference from the conventional and respectable name of her mother, indicating that it did sound strange even to a contemporary.

The name had negative connotations, as the Arab people were mostly seen as barbarians by the Byzantines. Similarly embarrassing names for the women of an imperial family had resulted in renamings both before and after Arabia's lifetime, for instance the empresses Aelia Eudocia and Aelia Anastasia, whose original names (Athenaïs and Ino) had pagan connotations. At the time however, the Byzantine Empire had a subject Arab population in the provinces of the Diocese of the East, a population that had undergone both Romanization and Christianization. Thus "Arab" did not translate to "enemy" or "raider". For hostile peoples of Arab origin, the sources use the term "Saracens" instead.

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