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Pontus is also a popular person-name in Sweden.

Pontus was a name applied in ancient times to extensive tracts of country in the northeast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) bordering on the Euxine ( Black Sea), which was often called simply Pontos (the Main), by the Greeks. The exact signification of this purely territorial name varied greatly at different times. The Greeks used it loosely of various parts of the shores of the Euxine, and the term did not get a definite connotation till after the establishment of the kingdom founded beyond the Halys during the troubled period following the death of Alexander the Great, about 301 BC, by Mithradates I, Ktistes, son of a Persian satrap in the service of Antigonus, one of Alexander's successors, and ruled by a succession of kings, mostly bearing the same name, till 64 BC.

As the greater part of this kingdom lay within the immense region of Cappadocia, which in early ages extended from the borders of CiliciaIn ancient geography, Cilicia ("Ki-LIK-ya") formed a district on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), north of Cyprus. Cilicia extended along the Aegean coast east from Pamphylia, to Mount Amanus (Giaour Dagh), which separated it from Syr to the Euxine, the kingdom as a whole was at first called "Cappadocia towards the Pontus", but afterwards simply "Pontus," the name Cappadocia being henceforth restricted to the southern half of the region previously included under that title. Under the last king, Mithradates Eupator, commonly called the Great, the realm of Pontus included not only Pontic Cappadocia but also the seaboard from the BithyniaBithynia was an ancient province in the northwest of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thracian Bosporus and the Black Sea ( Euxine). According to Strabo it was bounded on the east by the river Sangarius, but the more commonly received division extn frontier to ColchisColchis ( Georgian Kolkheti , or Aea-Colchis was, in ancient times, a district of Asia Minor, at the eastern extremity of the Black Sea, bounded on the north by the Caucasus. The name of Colchis first appears in Aeschylus and Pindar. It was inhabited by a, part of inland PaphlagoniaPaphlagonia was an ancient area on the northern central Black Sea coast of Anatolia, situated between Bithynia and Pontus, separated from Galatia by a prolongation to the east of the Bithynian Olympus. According to Strabo, the river Parthenius fromed the, and Lesser ArmeniaIn ancient geography, Cilicia ("Ki-LIK-ya") formed a district on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), north of Cyprus. Cilicia extended along the Aegean coast east from Pamphylia, to Mount Amanus (Giaour Dagh), which separated it from Syr. With the destruction of this kingdom by PompeyThis article refers to the Roman General. However, Pompey is also the nickname of the city of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, and also of its principal football club, Portsmouth F. Pompey is not to be confused with the Roman city of Pompeii. Gnaeus Pomp in 64 BC, the meaning of the name Pontus underwent a change. Part of the kingdom was now annexed to the Roman Empire60 and 400 with major cities. During this time only Dacia and Mesopotamia were added to the Empire but were lost before 300. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman state in the centuries following its reorganization under t, being united with Bithynia in a double province called "Pontus and Bithynia": this part included only the seaboard between Heracleia (Eregli) and Amisus (Samsun), the ora Pontica. Hereafter the simple name Pontus without qualification was regularly employed to denote the half of this dual province, especially by Romans and people speaking from the Roman point of view; it is so used almost always in the New Testament.

With the reorganization of the provincial system under Diocletian (about AD 295), the Pontic districts were divided up between four provinces of the dioecesis pontica:

1. Paphlagonia, to which was attached most of the old province Pontus
2. Diospontus, re-named Helenopontus by Constantine, containing the rest of the province Pontus and the adjoining district, eight cities in all (including Sinope, Amisus and Zela) with Amasia as capital
3. Pontus Polemoniacus, containing Comana, Polemonium, Cerasus and Trapezus with Neocaesarea as capital
4. Armenia Minor, five cities, with Sebasteia, as capital.

This rearrangement gave place in turn to the Byzantine system of military districts ( themes).