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Archive 1

Room for improvement

This page seems to be more about the circumstances of the discovery of an element than the origins of its name.

  1. "Actinium" apparently comes from "beam" or "ray", but why? Does actinium have something to do with light?
  2. "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.
  3. "the "ع" being a nasal "a"-like phoneme. "بورون" is pronounced (booroon) or simply (boron). The last letter is definitely an "n" and not a "k/q/kh" sound.


Potassium K From the English, "potash", means "pot-ash" (Potassium compound prepared from "an alkali extracted in a pot from the ash of burnt wood or tree leaves). The symbol K is from Latin name, Kalium, was named derived from "alkali", became from the Arabic "بوتاسيوم" (al qalīy), means "the calcined ashes".

The Arabic quoted here, "بوتاسيوم" is pronounced (bootaasiioom) (Arabic has no "p", so "b" is usually substituted) - this is the Arabic rendering of (potassium) without using the special script letter for "p". The HANS WEHR Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic lists (botas), (botasaa) as being from Italian: (It. potassa) and meaning "potash".


Sulfur S Almost certainly from the Arabic, "صفرا" (sufra), means "yellow", the bright color of the naturally occurring form. The word be descented into the Sanskrit, "गन्धक" (sulvere or sulvari), the Latin, "sulpur", the English, "sulfur", and also was commonly referred as "brimstone" in Bible, giving rise to the name of "Fire and brimstone", which are sermons where hell and eternal damnation for sinners is stressed.

"صفرا" is pronounced (sufra) as noted and does mean "yellow" in modern usage. "गन्धक" is pronounced (gandhak) which means "sulfur" in Sanskrit/Hindi.


Zirconium Zr From the Arabic, "ئشقنعى" (zarkûn). Derived from the Persian, "زرگون" (zargûn), means "gold like".

"ئشقنعى" is pronounced (ish-qn"ia). (zarkun) would look like "زركون" in Arabic script. (Interestingly, "زركش" (zarkasha) in Arabic means to embellish as with brocade. And "زرقون"(zarqun) means a bright red color.) "زرگون" is pronounced (zarkaun). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.161.30 (talk) 20:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


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Greek words

Got no time to inspect the article myself, but I remark that nearly all the Greek words in it are blatantly incorrect and inexistent in the form given. They were obviously inserted by someone who knows nothing about the language. However, the Greek etymologies are pretty much correct in general (their latin transliterations, at least). Omnipedian (talk) 18:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Element numbers

I just discovered this page, found it fascinating, and intend to return! One improvement I would very much like to see is the addition of atomic numbers (perhaps even in a sortable column). I am tempted to do this myself, and might actually get around to doing so -- especially if I had a bit of encouragement, and perhaps also someone who would look at my changes to catch any major goofs. (My Wikipedia edits have included a few table changes, but I've never added an entire column to a large table.) Tripodics (talk) 17:54, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Wolframite - After Peter Woulfe?

Not according to the article that is linked - which says the name derives from the German "Wolf Cream"? Just thought I'd bring that up. Also sorry for not editing this properly - new to wikipedia! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.229.229.183 (talk) 09:56, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Iron - Crazy speculation

I’m going to remove the suggestion that Anglo-Saxon īsern is related to Etruscan aisar. Just because somebody speculated about a (very unlikely) link doesn’t make it an etymology. It’s just speculation! The citation is also inadequate (Benvéniste 1969 cit. dep) and was added as a hidden comment in the second edit to this page in the history. --☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 13:40, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Sulphur — Sulvāri/çulvāri/गन्धक (gandhaka)

I’m beginning to wonder if sulvāri is some kind of phantom (or completely made-up) etymology. As user…ahem…71.198.161.30 pointed out 7 years ago गन्धक is gandhak(a) not sulvāri. The citation links to Google Books often aren’t very helpful as you can’t always find or read the relevant text, but lets look at the citations.

Skeat

Skeat, Walter W. (1882). A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. p. 529. Retrieved 5 January 2016. Sulphur.   (L.)   L. sulphur.    Cf. also Skt. çulvāri-, sulphur.

Skeat does not include the word in his list of words derived from Sanskrit on page 658.

Google returns 6 results for the spelling çulvāri, 5 of which are from the same site who all reference the one other result, Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary…

[L. sulphur; said to be conn. with Sans. çulvāri.] [1] [2]

Not sounding very certain!

Magill

The Google Books citation for Magill's Survey of Science only provides the most glancing of references to etymology. I don’t think this can be used as a citation at all.

Sulfur is one of the handful of elements known as elements since ancient times. This fact is reflected in the name itself, which comes to us from Sanskrit via Latin, and refers in meaning only to the element itself, not to its origin or chemical properties (as do “francium” and “germanium,” for example, and “silicon”—from “flint,” silex.)

Skinner

The Google Books citation doesn’t return any results for the linked search (“sulphur sanskrit”). It does return a result for “sulphur sanskrit” but it’s only a match for “sanskrit” in a completely different topic.

The Hathi Trust provides access to a scanned copy though…

SULPHUR
Latin—sulfur, brimstone.
The name may have been derived from the Sanskrit name for sulphur, culvari. There is no connection with any Greek root, the Greek term for sulphur being θεῖον, divine. [3]

A review of the 1970 re-issue of the book remarks on its many inaccuracies, so I have doubts about its usefulness. The removal of the cedilla on the c is a bad sign.

Wiktionary

Wiktionary tackles etymology under two entries—the canonical scientific spelling sulfur and under the Classical Latin spelling sulphur.

sulfur
English

Etymology

From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman sulfre, from Latin sulfur, itself of uncertain origin. Displaced Old English swefel.

…

Latin

Etymology

From a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to burn.” But compare Old Armenian ծծումբ ‎(ccumb, “sulfur”).

sulphur
Latin

Alternative forms

  • sulpur (archaic)
  • sulfur (late-Classical)

Etymology

From a Hellenisation of earlier sulpur, from Proto-Indo-European *swelplos, from the root *swel- ‎(“to burn, smoulder”).

Based on all of the above I’ll remove references to Sanskrit. They can always be put back if someone can come up with some authoritative sources.

--☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 05:08, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Problems

Like Dawn Davenport this page has lots of problems. Being a table is good, but it seems people forget what the column headings are and just dump stuff where they like resulting in the simplified categories of the columns either being overwhelmed with detail or misused. E.g. under Iron how does “descriptive: Anglo-Saxon” explain the origin of the symbol Fe? The more you look at it the worse it gets. --☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 06:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Systematic and other former names

Should the the etymology of former names be included here? I suggest that they add little value in the table, certainly not in proportion to the added length. Perhaps they can be omitted by adding separate info, either as an added paragraph or as two entries in the table itself - one for the IUPAC systematic names and one for eka-*. YBG (talk) 05:25, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

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Potassium etymology

The Arabic word transliterated as "al kaliy" actually reads as "butasium". Someone apparently copied the Arabic word for "potassium" without knowing how to read Arabic.

Would someone who can type in Arabic please type the "Al kaliy" in Arabic characters and add it to the potassium etymology? Crystal whacker (talk) 23:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


القلي EbruAsena (talk) 12:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the typing, User:EbruAsena. The article looks like it was updated a while ago and currently matches what you wrote. DMacks (talk) 11:50, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Symbol origin

What's up with the "Symbol origin" column? It seems weirdly inconsistent and unneeded. Most of these just say what kind of name it is, not the origin. Most of the symbols are just abbreviations of the element names anyway, and the elements whose symbols actually differ from their names seem to all have the explanation for their symbol in the "Description" column instead. PointlessUsername (talk) 21:28, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Improvements to consider

While building the new template, I found these items worth considering:

  • Almost all references are to be checked for availability, correctness, statement used in contextcontent.
{{OEtymD}} (Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary) has a deprecated note.
  • For readability, we could consider removing the foreign-script spellings ("Greek νέος (neos), meaning "new".") OR move use these in the single-word cells only ("Original word").
  • Note that the current setup has much repetition: original word, its language, transliteration and meaning are mentioned twice.
  • The repetitive descriptions (Ytterby, eka-, Uxx) could be handled differently: create separate text blocks, verbose description (not as a footnote). Then #link to these from the table.
  • There are multiple other areticles that do this etymology (all or partly). These could be merged, or at least they should be synchrinised.
  • I am open for more layout improvements. Thoughts?

-DePiep (talk) 13:18, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

List into template table (14 August 2021)

I have replaced the in-article table list with de new, dedicated template {{List of chemical element name etymologies}}. Using templates adds ease of formatting and comparing texts. These are the changes:

  • The template uses subtemplates (/row) to take care of table formatting (rows, cells, presentation).
  • I have redesigned the row-layout, mainly to improve mobile view and to use info already available (simple words and verbose text). The old, clunky layout made it nigh inmpossible to read the text easily (scrolling required). It now has wider space for the verbose texts, which should make reading more comfortable.
  • Text units about symbol-etymology ('Hg') and former names ('eka-silicon') have separate entries.
  • Formatting words: using {{lang}}, {{transl}} and " " (=meaning) to format word semantics. Also use italics when about the word itself ("The English word soda"). Also used {{cuneiform}}, {{PIE}}.
  • Rephrased sentences, for example to make them more similar throughout the list.
  • Cleanup reference formatting (did not check for correctness though).
  • Added: each element has an anchor by symbol (so one can link like [[List of chemical element name etymologies#Hg]] {{slink|[[List of chemical element name etymologies|Hg}})
  • Not done: see notes below.
Comments?
-DePiep (talk) 13:09, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Asartea: has objected to this announced change, to which nobody objected at the time, by undoing it and nominating both Template:List of chemical element name etymologies and its helper-templates for deletion. DMacks (talk) 15:39, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

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