Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
archaic name for the Black Sea, from Latin Pontus Euxinus, from Greek Pontos Euxenios, literally "the hospitable sea," a euphemism for Pontos Axeinos, "the inhospitable sea." From eu- "good, well" (see eu-) + xenos "host; guest; stranger" (see xeno-).\n
\nAccording to Room, The Old Persian name for the sea was akhshaena, literally "dark," probably in reference to the sudden, dangerous storms that make the sea perilous to sailors and darken its face (or perhaps in reference to the color of the water, from the sea being deep and relatively lifeless), and the Greeks took this untranslated as Pontos Axeinos, which was interpeted as the similar-sounding Greek word axenos "inhospitable." Thus the modern English name could reflect the Old Persian one.\n
Usage examples of "euxine".
A crowd of temples and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion of the Grecian navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine.
The latter of those mighty streams, which rises at the distance of only thirty miles from the former, flows above thirteen hundred miles, for the most part to the south-east, collects the tribute of sixty navigable rivers, and is, at length, through six mouths, received into the Euxine, which appears scarcely equal to such an accession of waters.
Pontus, followed the western coast of the Euxine, passed before the wide mouths of the Borysthenes, the Niester, and the Danube, and increasing their fleet by the capture of a great number of fishing barks, they approached the narrow outlet through which the Euxine Sea pours its waters into the Mediterranean, and divides the continents of Europe and Asia.
The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred miles from the Euxine to the Hadriatic, was at once invaded, and occupied, and desolated, by the myriads of Barbarians whom Attila led into the field.
Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and half-civilized barbarians.
In this place we may observe, that the northern shores of the Euxine, beyond Trebizond in Asia, and beyond the Danube in Europe, acknowledged the sovereignty of the emperors, and received at their hands either tributary princes or Roman garrisons.
He was going to go right round the top end of the Euxine and down through the lands of the Roxolani to the mouth of the Danubius.
Iphigeneia had not been sacrificed, she had been saved at the last moment by Artemis and spirited far away, as far as anyone could imagine, to the northern shores of the Euxine Sea, to live among the barbarous Taurians and be their priestess.
To navigate the Euxine before the month of May, or after that of September, is esteemed by the modern Turks the most unquestionable instance of rashness and folly.
A large state in northeastern Anatolia, bordering the Euxine Sea and more or less enclosed by the Halys River.
They had commenced their pirate careers far to the east of Sicily, in the waters of the Euxine Sea.
Down the eastern seaboard of the Euxine marched and sailed Neoptolemus and Archelaus, and one by one the little kingdoms of the Caucasus yielded to Pontus, including gold-rich Colchis and the lands between the Phasis and Pontic Rhizus.
He knew where he was going: into Noricum, Moesia, Dacia, the lands around the river Danubius, all the way to the Euxine Sea.
Suebi had retreated to the eaves of the Bacenis Forest, a limitless expanse of beech, oak and birch which eventually fused with an even mightier forest, the Hercynian, and spread untrammeled a thousand miles to far Dacia and the sources of the fabulous rivers flowing down to the Euxine Sea.
Kalends Caesar outlined the intended campaign of Publius Vatinius and Marcus Antonius against King Burebistas of the Dacians, necessary because, said Caesar, he was going to plant colonies of Roman Head Count all around the margins of the Euxine Sea.