The story
Named by Leonid Pautov, Atali Agakhanov, Elena Sokolova, Frank Hawthorne and Vladimir Karpenko after the Byzantine empire to reflect the complexity and chemical diversity of the mineral, seemingly reminiscent of the complex organisation and racial diversity of the Byzantines. Byzanti- + -ev- + -ite
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.