Did the Trojans found London?

Medieval England believed in a somewhat strange origin story: that London was once called 'Troynovant' or 'New Troy', and that Englishmen were the direct descendants of Aeneas, one of the many heroes of the Trojan War.

This legend first appears in the Historia Brittonum, an anonymous 9th-century historical compilation to which commentary was added by Nennius, but it is best known from the account given by the 12th-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae.

Geoffrey of Monmouth mentioned that Brutus was the name of the founder and first King of Britain. According to the legend (he wrote), Brutus was the great-grandson of Aeneas who traveled to Greece and met a group of Trojan refugees who had been enslaved by the Greeks. Brutus became their leader and forced the Greek king to let them go.

Brutus and his Trojan refugees then travel west, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the great unknown. They hear, probably from Punic tin traders on their way to Tintagel, about the fabled island of Albion, where giants live. King Brutus defeated these giants on Albion and build a city along the River Thames, which he named 'Troia Nova' (New Troy), a name which was gradually corrupted to 'Trinovantum'.

But in reality, the name Trinovantum derives from the Iron Age tribe of the Trinovantes, who lived in Essex, Suffolk and parts of what is now Greater London. They are even mentioned by Julius Caesar in his account of his expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC. In a later account of those expeditions by Orosius, they are referred to as civitas Trinovantum, meaning 'the nation (or city) of the Trinovantes'.

In Roman times, the city was known by the name Londinium, which appears to be cognate with Llundain, and London.

So, London wasn't founded by exiled Trojans. But it does beg the question where the Trojans really did go after their defeat at the hands of the coalition of Greeks.

What everyone seems to forget is that the Trojans were actually Greeks too. And those Trojan Greeks would have done what all Greeks do when they have met with a disaster: They try to rebuild their city ór they travel back to their homeland and families, hoping to rebuild their lives there.

A perfect example of this is the fairly recent genocide, expulsion, and erasure of Greeks in Smyna (now Izmir) by the Turks in 1912. They called it the He Megali Katastrophe ('The Great Catastrophe'). Survivors of that massacre mostly went to their family members in Greece.