Great Russia is an obsolete name formerly applied to the territories of "Russia proper", the land that formed the core of Muscovy and later, Russia. This was the land to which the ethnic Russians were native and where the ethnogenesis of (Great) Russians took place. The name is said to have come from the Greek  Μεγάλη Ῥωσ(σ)ία (Megálē Rhōs(s)ía) used by Byzantines for the northern part of the lands of Rus'.