Origin and history of Pontus

Old English findan "come upon, meet with; discover; obtain by search or study" (class III strong verb; past tense fand, past participle funden), from Proto-Germanic *findan "to come upon, discover" (source also of Old Saxon findan, Old Frisian finda, Old Norse finna, Middle Dutch vinden, Old High German findan, German finden, Gothic finþan), originally "to come upon."

The Germanic word is from PIE root *pent- "to tread, go" (source also of Old High German fendeo "pedestrian;" Sanskrit panthah "path, way;" Avestan panta "way;" Greek pontos "open sea," patein "to tread, walk;" Latin pons (genitive pontis) "bridge;" Old Church Slavonic pǫti "path," pęta "heel;" Russian put' "path, way;" Armenian hun "ford," Old Prussian pintis "road"). The prehistoric sense development in Germanic would be from "to go" to "to find (out)," but Boutkan has serious doubts about this.

Germanic *-th- in English tends to become -d- after -n-. The change in the Germanic initial consonant is from Grimm's Law. To find out "to discover by scrutiny" is from 1550s (Middle English had a verb, outfinden, "to find out," c. 1300).

"that is over a bridge," 1844, originally and for long usually in a London context, in reference to the Surrey side of the Thames, from Latin trans "across, beyond" (see trans-) + pontine, from stem of pons "bridge" (see pons). "[A]pplied to the Surrey and Victoria theaters, at which cheap melodrama was formerly popular, and hence, in London theatrical parlance, to any play of a cheap, melodramatic character" [Century Dictionary, 1891].

An identical word was used by 1891 in a sense of "that which is beyond the sea," from Latin pontus (See Pontus). For "across a river" transriverine and transfluvial have been used.