Blachernae (Medieval Greek: Βλαχέρναι) was a suburb in the northwestern section of Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire.
[1] The Romanian philologist Ilie Gherghel wrote a study about Blachernae and concluded that it possibly derived from the name of a Vlach.
(sometimes written as Blach or Blasi)[2] Gherghel compared data from old historians like Genesios and from the Greek lexicon Suidas and mentioned the existence of a small colony of Vlachs in the area of today Blachernae.
The Byzantine origin of the word Vlach is supported by the historian Stelian Brezeanu who considers that one of the first accounts about Romanians south of the Danube, referred to by the name vlachorynchini (the Vlachs near the Rynchos river), is present in a historical account about the Kastamonitou Monastery which was written in the 17th century but based on a 9th-century Byzantine source.
During the Komnenian period, it became the favourite imperial residence, eclipsing the older Great Palace of Constantinople on the eastern end of the city.