Pontus or Pontos is a region within Anatolia on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in the modern-day eastern Black Sea region of Turkey, in West Asia. The name was applied to the coastal region and its mountainous hinterland by the Greeks who colonized the area in the Archaic period and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Εύξεινος Πόντος, 'Hospitable Sea', or simply Pontos as early as the Aeschylean Persians and Herodotus' Histories.