Chemical Elements

Etymology of Chemical Elements

 For my Advanced Chemistry class at school, I had an assignment to research some element's etymology- the origin of the word. Most of the elements' names were based on Latin and Greek words, which was strange for me as learning English as a second language. Here are some examples of some of the elements' name, original name and their meanings and I thought they are quite interesting for sharing to the people through this blog post.

 As a Korean, it was really hard for me to understand chemical elements in English because the name of elements in Korean is significantly different from that in English. But, the etymology of the elements that I have learned in class have gave me a better understandings and helped me to

Antimony (Sb)

The element Antimony’s name come from the Latin word ‘Stibium’ More specifically, the current word of the element came from the Greek word ‘anti+monos’ which means ‘not alone’. 

Copper (Cu)

The word copper comes from the Latin word ‘Cuprum’, after the island of Cyprus because the Cyprus was one of the major suppliers of copper during the Roman Empire era. 

Gold (Au)

Gold was oriented from the Latin word ‘Aurum’, which means relating to gold, or gold colored.

Iron (Fe)

Iron’s elemental name comes from the Latin ‘Ferrum’, which means strong, sword, or steel.

Led (Pb)

The element Led comes from the Latin word “Plumbum” which means led. I tried to find more meaning about Plumbum, but only meaning it had was nothing but ‘led’.

Mercury (Hg)

The Latin word for Mercury is called Hydragyrum, which is reason that the symbol for Mercury is Hg. According to the online dictionary, the word Hydragyrum means liquid silver in latin. It is quite reasonable because Mercury is the only metal that exists as a liquid form, and its color looks like the color of a silver. 

Silver (Ag)

The Latin word for silver is called “Argentums” which leads Silver’s chemical symbol as Ag. There is no information founded about the origin and the meaning of Argentums but the the word ‘Silver’ derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “Seolfor".

Sodium (Na)

The origin of the name for Sodium comes from the old Latin word Natrium. Natrium is the official word that use in Korea that refers to Sodium. The meaning of Natrium is an “obsolete name for sodium” and “washing soda”.

Tin (Sn)

Tin’s rood word, Stagnum, is a Latin word that had a multiple meanings. However, most of the meanings were not reasonable and did not make any sense. There was one satisfying definition for the meaning of Stagnum, which was “alloy of silver and lead”.