This article lists the etymology of chemical elements of the periodic table.
History
Throughout the history of chemistry, many chemical elements have been discovered. In the 19th century, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table, a table of elements which describes their structure. Because elements have been discovered at various times and places, from antiquity through the present day, their names have derived from several languages and cultures.
Named after places
41 of the 118 known elements have names associated with, or specifically named for, places around the world or among astronomical objects. 32 of these have names tied to the places on Earth, and the other nine are named after to Solar System objects: helium for the Sun; tellurium for the Earth; selenium for the Moon; mercury (indirectly), uranium, neptunium and plutonium after their respective planets of Uranus and Neptune, and the dwarf planet Pluto (the latter of which was still considered a planet at the time of plutonium's naming); cerium for the dwarf planet Ceres (also considered a planet at the time of naming) and palladium for the asteroid Pallas.[1]
Elements may also have been named after minerals (in which they were discovered). For example, beryllium is named after beryl.
Controversies and failed proposals
Other element names given after people have been proposed but failed to gain official international recognition. These include columbium (Cb), hahnium (Ha), joliotium (Jl), and kurchatovium (Ku), names connected to Christopher Columbus, Otto Hahn, Irène Joliot-Curie, and Igor Kurchatov; and also cassiopeium (Cp), a name coming from the constellation Cassiopeia and is hence indirectly connected to the mythological Cassiopeia.
Current naming practices and procedures
For the last two decades, IUPAC has been the governing body for naming elements. IUPAC has also provided a temporary name and symbol for unknown or recently synthesized elements.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p qSome elements (particularly ancient elements) were associated with Greek (or Roman or other) gods or people, in Greek mythology (or other mythology), and with planets (or other objects in the Solar System), such as Mercury (mythology) – Mercury (planet) – Mercury (element), etc. Also, astrological symbols for the planets were often used as symbols for the ancient elements.
^At one time, beryllium was called glucinium, which is from Greek γλυκύς (glykys), meaning "sweet", due to the sweet taste of its salts.
^Nitrogen, The pure gas is inert enough that Antoine Lavoisier referred to it as azote, meaning "without life", since animals placed in it died of asphyxiation. This term became the French for nitrogen and later spread to many other languages.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n oeka-... named elements: Mendeleevpredicted and described properties of then-unknown elements, based on the then empty locations in his 1871 Periodic table. The predictions proved to be correct with the discovery of scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium. He named those unknown, unnamed elements "eka-...", for example "eka-boron"; the prefix means one more (i.e., one more row below boron in the periodic table). Ultimately, eka-boron was discovered, named "aluminium" and indeed is located below boron. The elements he predicted, eka-boron, eka-aluminium, eka-manganese, and eka-silicon proved to be good predictors of scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium, respectively. The prefix eka-, from the Sanskrit, means "one" (one place down from a known element in the table), and is sometimes used in discussions about any more undiscovered element. For example, darmstadtium is sometimes referred to as eka-platinum.
^Gemoll, W.; Vretska, K. (1997). Griechisch-Deutsches Schul- und Handwörterbuch [Greek–German dictionary] (9th ed.). öbvhpt. ISBN 3-209-00108-1.
^ a b c dIn a mine near Ytterby, Sweden, many elements were discovered. Four elements are named after Ytterby: § yttrium (Y), § terbium (Tb), § erbium (Er), § ytterbium (Yb).
^Pearse, Roger (2002-09-16). "Syriac Literature". Retrieved 2008-02-11.
^Vygus, Mark (April 2012). Vygus dictionary (PDF). p. 1409.
^Antimony, Sb
Littré suggests that the first form is derived from *stimmida, a hypothetical alternative accusative of stimmi (the canonical accusative of the noun is the same as the nominative: stimmi). The Arabic word for the substance, as "mark" or "the cosmetic", can appear as تحميض، ثمود، وثمود، وثمود (ithmid, athmoud, othmod or uthmod)
LSJ, s.v., vocalisation, spelling, and declension vary; Endlich; Celsus, 6.6.6 ff; Pliny Natural History 33.33; Lewis and Short: Latin Dictionary. OED, s. antimony.
stimmi is used by the Attic tragic poets of the 5th century BC. Later Greeks also used στίβι (stibi), which is written in Latin by Celsus and Pliny the Elder in the first century AD. Pliny also names stimi [sic], larbaris, and alabaster (Greek: ἀλάβαστρον), "very common platyophthalmos (πλατυόφθαλμος)", "wide-eye" in Greek (the description refers to the effects of the cosmetic). In Egyptian hieroglyphics, mśdmt; the vowels are uncertain, but in Coptic and according to an Arabic tradition, it is pronounced mesdemet (Albright; Sarton, quotes Meyerhof, the translator). In Arabic, the word for powdered stibnite is kuhl.[1]
^"Antimony | Define Antimony at Dictionary.com". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2011-01-02.
^ a bdidymium was originally mistaken for an element, later it was discovered that it separates into elements #Pr and #Nd. The metals have different-coloured salts, which helps distinguish them.
^The ancient Greek derivation of Prometheus from the Greek πρό pro ("before") + μανθάνω manthano ("learn"), thus "forethought", which engendered a contrasting brother Epimetheus ("afterthought"), was a folk etymology; it is succinctly expressed in Servius' commentary on Virgil, Eclogue 6.42: "Prometheus vir prudentissimus fuit, unde etiam Prometheus dictus est ἀπὸ τής πρόμηθείας, id est a providentia." Modern scientific linguistics suggests that the name derived from the Proto-Indo-European root that also produces the Vedicpra math, "to steal", hence pramathyu-s, "thief", cognate with "Prometheus", the thief of fire. The Vedic myth of fire's theft by Mātariśvan is an analog to the Greek account. Pramantha was the tool used to create fire. See: Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, p. 27.; Williamson (2004), The Longing for Myth in Germany, 214–15; Dougherty, Carol (2006). Prometheus p. 4.
^Pyykkö, Pekka (2015-07-23). "Magically magnetic gadolinium". Nature Chemistry. 7 (8): 680. Bibcode:2015NatCh...7..680P. doi:10.1038/nchem.2287. PMID 26201746.
^"Thule in Wordnik, accessed March 9, 2010". Wordnik.com. Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved 2011-01-02.
^Protactinium; In 1913, Kasimir Fajans and Otto H. Göhring identified and named element 91 brevium, from Latin brevis, which means "brief, short"; protactinium has a short half-life. The name was changed to "protoactinium" in 1918 and shortened to protactinium in 1949.
^Mendelevium, "Mendeleyev" commonly spelt as Mendeleev, Mendeléef, or Mendelejeff, and first name sometimes spelt as Dmitry or Dmitriy
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n oFormal IUPAC Systematic element name. Temporary name and symbol, denoting the element number, available before a formal name is given.
^Some humorous scientists suggested the name policium, because 110 is the emergency telephone number for the German police.
Further reading
Eric Scerri, The Periodic System, Its Story and Its Significance, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.
