'Port' wine is named after Porto, Portugal — and the same Latin root 'portus' gave us 'ford' and 'fjord.'
A sweet, fortified wine from the Douro Valley in Portugal, traditionally shipped from the city of Porto.
From 'Oporto' (Portuguese 'O Porto,' meaning 'the port'), the city at the mouth of the Douro River from which the wine was traditionally exported. The name 'Porto' itself comes from Latin 'portus' (harbor, port), from Proto-Indo-European *pértus (a crossing, a passage). English merchants began fortifying Douro wines with brandy in the late seventeenth century to preserve them during the
The country of Portugal gets its name from the same city: 'Portus Cale' was the ancient Roman settlement at the mouth of the Douro, and the name expanded to cover the entire nation. So 'port wine' and 'Portugal' are etymologically the same word. English 'ford' (a river crossing) and Norwegian 'fjord' are also distant cousins, all from PIE *pértus (a crossing).