Mersin is a large city and a port on the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. It is part of an interurban agglomeration – the Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area – and lies on the western part of Çukurova, a geographical, economic, and cultural region. The city was named after the aromatic plant Myrsine in the family Primulaceae, a myrtle that grows in abundance in the area ; the 17th-century traveler Evliya Çelebi wrote that there was also a clan named Mersinoğulları