PONTUS

For thousands of years, the Black Sea was known as "Pontus" (in Latin), "Πόντος" (in Greek), or "Pont" (in Slavic).

The original meaning of the word is "bridge", from which we indeed derived, for example, "pontoon". But in Georgian, "poni" (ფონი) also means "ford" (close to bridge for both are to cross a water). Who borrowed from whom?

The answer to this question can be obtained by asking both the Greeks and the Kartvelians to explain the presence of the letter "t" in the word "Pont". The Greeks cannot do this. But the Kartvelians can with the help of, no more, no less, Primary Chronicle...

The fact is that in the Chronicle the Black Sea is unexpectedly called the "Ponet Sea" (Понетьское море), completely revealing the Kartvelian toponym "Poneti", Even the soft sign is there, marking the former Kartvelian ending of the nominative case "-i".

The word "Poneti" (ფონეთი), thus, is translated as "where the fords are" or "place of fords". This was the original name of the Black Sea, which explains how the letter "t" could get into the word "Pont".

In addition to the actual true explanation of the etymology of another toponym, this article also contains additional evidence that the borrowing took place from the Kartvelian languages to Ancient Greek, and not vice versa, as has always been believed. How the Black Sea could be associated with a "ford" becomes clear from Herodotus's "History", which tells us about the "Cimmerian crossings" from the Taman Peninsula to Crimea, along which the Cimmerians crossed the Black Sea by a ford.