MEDIEVAL BULGARIANS AS "MYSIANS"

Medieval Greek (and later Western) authors described contemporary foreign cultures by mimicking the style, terminology, and frameworks of classical Greek historians such as Herodotus or Thucydides. This literary practice of systemic replacement of contemporary names with names from antiquity is known as Classicizing Ethnography,  usually based on broad geographic overlaps.

Slavic and Albanian autochthonism have largely been established on the basis of a naïve and uncritical reading of texts belonging to classicizing ethnography, with the obvious aim of establishing a direct connection to a “glorious antiquity.” Thus, just as in Albania there is the myth of ancient Epirote-Macedonian-Illyrian ancestry, in Bulgaria there is (to a lesser extent) the myth of Thracian ancestry ¹.

In Byzantine Classicizing Ethnography, Bulgarians usually appear as "Mysians", a people traditionally viewed as a Thracian tribe. However, there are cases where the Eastern Roman authors make clear that contemporary Bulgarians and the Mysians have no actual historical and ethnological relation.

For example, Leo the Deacon (10th c.) describes the Bulgarians as "Mysians", but he paradoxically connects them with Turkic tribes that settled the Balkans in the 7th century. He also writes that this population called themselves "Bulgars", implying that "Mysians" is an exonym used by himself:

«the Mysians, being settlers descended from the northern Kotrags, Khazars, and Cumans, departed from their ancestral homelands; and that, wandering through Europe, they took possession of this land and settled in it, at the time when Constantine, surnamed Pogonatus, was ruling over the Romans. They also named the country Bulgaria, after Bulgar, their tribal chieftain.» ²

Michael Attaleiates (11th c.) gives more clear information about the ethnic identity of these "Mysians", stating that the name they use for themselves (ἰδικὴ προσηγορία) is "Bulgarians":

«Μυσοὶ δε, οἷς ἰδικὴ προσηγορία τὸ τῶν Βουλγάρων καθέστηκεν ὄνομα...» 

["The Mysians, for whom the name Bulgarians had become their particular designation"] ³

This is also confirmed by Laonicos Chalcocondyles (15th c.), who simply states "we [Greeks] call them Mysians, they call themselves Bulgarians":

«ἀναπυνθανόμενος εὑρίσκω, ὡς ταύτῃ Βουλγάρους μὲν τούτους, οὕς γε Μυσοὺς ὀνομάζομεν, Σέρβους δὲ ἐκείνους, οὓς καὶ Τριβαλλούς, διακεκρίσθαι ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων ἐς τοὔνομα ξυνηνέχθη ἀπὸ τούτου»

[ "I find that it was from this that they came to be distinguished from one another in name: the former as Bulgarians, whom we call Mysians, and the latter as Serbs, whom we also call Triballians." ] ⁴.

It is therefore clear, that the use of the term "Mysians" as a designation for Medieval Bulgarians does not constitute proof for an actual ethnological and historical relation between the two peoples. The authors themselves make clear that the Bulgarians are neither an indigenous Balkan population called "Mysians" nor did they ever described themselves as such. 

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Notes:

¹ Bulgarians are indeed partially descended from ancient Thracians. Bulgarian autochthonism, however, rejects the Slavic migration, as well as the contribution of the Turkic Bulgars to the formation of the medieval Bulgarian nation. 

² Leonis Diaconi Caloënsis Historiae libri decem, 6.8

³ Michael Attaleiates, Historia, 3.2

⁴ Laonicos Chalcocondyles, Histories, 1.32 [original Greek text]