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“Pagans” never actually called themselves that. It was originally an insult that Christian writers used for anyone who didn’t follow Christianity or Judaism. It comes from the Latin word paganus meaning “rural” or “country-dweller” because even after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, rural areas still remained mostly pagan. Much of rural Italy, France, and Spain remained pagan well into the early Middle Ages. The Mani Peninsula in Greece remained pagan until at least the 8th century. Even Lithuanian paganism survived the Christianization of Lithuania in the 14th century in rural areas and the last actual Lithuanian pagan, Balčiūnas Minvydas-Vincas, died in 1908.

“Pagan” wasn’t even the only term used by Christians for followers of pre-Christian polytheistic religions. In the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, they used the old ethnonym Hellene to refer to followers of Greek paganism (remember that they identified as Romans at this point, they didn’t use the term Hellene to refer to themselves again until the Greek War of Independence). In Germanic-speaking countries, they referred to followers of Germanic paganism as heathens which effectively had the same meaning as the Latin paganus, “rural” or “country-dweller.” The oldest usage of the Germanic name actually comes from the missionary Ulfilas who translated the Bible to Gothic (an East Germanic language) in the 4th century. When translating Mark 7:26, he translated the Greek word Ἑλληνίς (Hellēnis) meaning “Greek woman” to 𐌷𐌰𐌹𐌸𐌽𐍉 (haiþnō) meaning “heatheness.”