Talk:List of chemical element name etymologies
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This page was easier to find via google than through wikipedia's internal search. Perhaps integrating into another page and other pages would be a good thing:
[edit] Room for improvement
This page seems to be more about the circumstances of the discovery of an element than the origins of its name.
- "Actinium" apparently comes from "beam" or "ray", but why? Does actinium have something to do with light?
- "Aluminium" from "alum": why? Trawling the article aluminum, I find the sentence "In 1808, Humphry Davy identified the existence of a metal base of alum, which he at first named alumium and later aluminum ." That's what should be here.
- "Americium" doesn't even say that it's from "America" (State the Obvious), much less why that name was chosen (a burst of WWII patriotism?)
Maybe this list should be moved to "List of circumstances of discovery of chemical elements" and start a new "List of chemical element name etymologies". jnestorius(talk) 23:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
- The version I heard was that Americium was chosen because it is under Europium in the periodic table (well, and probably a bit of nationalism as well...). Itub 18:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Where are the etymologies?
I agree with the above poster - some entries have no etymology given at all. If I wanted to know who discovered the element, when and how, I'd look up the Wikipedia entry for the element itself, not this page!
That aside, when someone gets round to making a proper list of etymologies, could it be noted that arsenic comes (indirectly, via the discussion already given) from the Ancient Greek for "male", as metals were once considered to be male or female, and arsenic was thought to be male. There doesn't seem to be an element derived from the Ancient Greek for "female", as far as I know. — Paul G 11:34, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Also, language?
What language was this text translated from? There are idioms used which make no sense in english. In particular, one that's used repeatedly is "has ever been called". I would correct it but I'm not sure what to correct it to. "Has previously been called"? "Has also been called"? In some cases it seems to refer to names which were proposed and never adopted though. 87.127.95.194 (talk) 14:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- I suspect that the editor who added that was not a native English speaker (I think Thai, from looking at his/her user page). Feel free to correct any grammar errors. I would say "has also been called". --Itub (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
