How did they come up with the names of the elements on the periodic table
P.B., Concord
The rule for naming elements is simple. You find it, you name it, with the approval of the International Union of Physical and Applied Chemistry. Just don't name it after yourself. That's considered tacky.
You don't have to be an Einstein to figure out where they got the name for Einsteinium. Several more of the recently discovered elements honor famous scientists. There's Glenn SEABORG-ium, Neils BOHR-ium, Enrico FERMI-um, Alfred NOBEL-ium, Pierre and Marie CURI-um, and perhaps most notably, Dmitri Ivanovich MENDELEYEV-ium.
Russian chemist Mendeleyev and German physicist Julius Lothar Meyer recognized that certain properties of elements occur in patterns. Element 2, Helium, for example, is similar in chemical behavior to Neon (10), Argon (18), Krytpon (36), Xenon (54), and Radon (86). Scientists call that periodicity. It was a great way to organize the elements. Thus, the periodic table.
By the way, it's much simpler to number an element than name one. The atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus of the element's atom.
Place names show up periodically on the table. Germanium, Europium, Francium, and Americum, are some of the obvious ones. Maybe you didn't know that copper is based on the Latin Cyprum for Cyprus. Or Gallium for the Latin Gallia, for France. Or that Hafnium - surely you've heard of good old 72, Hafnium - is based on the Latin Hafnia(Copenhagen).
Ytterby, Sweden is the place name category winner. It's the root of four element names, Yttrium, Erbium, Ytterbium, and Terbium.
Uranium, Neptunium, and Plutonium are based on planets. (Seaborg, who discovered Plutonium, gave it the symbom Pu instead of Pl, as a joke.)
Mythology is big. Palladium comes from the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas. Thorium is for the Scandinavian deity Thor. Tantalum is for the Greek mythological king Tantalus. He even gets his kid in there. Niobium is for Niobe, Tantalus' daughter.
Many elements are named for their properties. Hydrogen for the Latin hudor(water), and gennan(generator), Bromine for the Greek bromos(stench), Iridium for the Latin iridis(rainbow). Have you ever smelled heated sulfur? Then you may appreciate why it's named the way it is. Sulfur is the Latin word for brimstone.
Radium puts out energy rays. It's named for the Latin for ray - radius. Actinium emits energy rays too. But the Curies had already taken the Latin word for ray. So Actinium is based on the Greek word for ray - aktmos.
Some names don't seem that elementary. The element you thought was named for Superman's home planet, Krypton, in fact comes from the Greek kryptos(hidden). Cobalt comes from the German kobold(evil spirit), Xenon is the Greek word for stranger, and Thallium comes from the Greek word thallos(young shoot). Antimony comes from the Greek anti(opposed to) and monos(solitude). An element that doesn't want to be alone?
Then there is fun with Ununnilium - un(one) un(one) nil(zero) for element 110; Unununium - un(one) un(one) un(one) for element 111; and the ever popular Ununbium. You guessed it...112. Perhaps the physicists who discovered those and earned the right to name them need to spend a little more time outside of the lab.
Truth is, those Ununs are still known by their nothing numerical names because they haven't been officially named. Nor have elements 107 up to 118, discovered in lab experiments only within the past couple years. (116 and 118 were discovered just a few months ago at the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory.) Maybe they could call one of them Y2K-ium, and the other one MILLENNIUM-ium.
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