Poti

Poti is a port city in Georgia, located on the eastern Black Sea coast in the region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti in the west of the country. Built near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Phasis and deriving its name from the same, the city has become a major port city and industrial center since the early 20th century. It is also home to a main naval base and the headquarters of the Georgian Navy. Adjacent to the Poti port area is the RAKIA-owned Free Industrial Zone. Inaugurated in April 2008, it has registered a number of businesses, including those from Iranian businesspeople trying to evade sanctions against Iran.

The name Poti is apparently linked to Phasis, but the etymology is a matter of a scholarly dispute. "Phasis" is first recorded in Hesiod's Theogony as a name of the river, not a town. Since Erich Diehl, 1938, first suggested a non-Hellenic origin of the name and asserted that Phasis might have been a derivative of a local hydronym, several explanations have been proposed, linking the name to the Proto-Georgian-Zan *Poti, Svan *Pasid, and even to a Semitic word, meaning "a gold river".

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