| | Origin of Element Name Click to see citations | |
Element
| | Origin | Description | |
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| property—Greek for not alone |
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| | property—Greek for idle or inactive | | |
| | mineral—Greek for yellow orpiment | | |
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property—Greek for unstable | | |
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| | place—City in California that is the home of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) |
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| | person—Danish physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics | | |
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property—Greek for stink or stench | | |
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| mineral—Latin for calamine |
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| | mineral—Latin for lime or chalk | | |
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| | mineral—Latin for coal or charcoal
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| color—Latin for sky blue or bluish gray | | |
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color—Greek for yellow green | | |
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| | mythical—German for subterranean gnome or evil sprite | | |
| | person—Polish scientist and astronomer who proposed that the Earth and the other planets circle the Sun | | |
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| people—Pierre was a French physicist and Marie was a Polish-born French chemist and physicist.
They both shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Antoine Henri Becquerel. (Marie Curie also received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.) | | |
| | place—German city that is the
home of Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH (GSI) | | |
| | place—Russian city that is the home of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) | | |
| | property—Greek for hard or difficult to obtain | | |
| | person—German-born American physicist who won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics | | |
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| | person—Italian-born American physicist who won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics | | |
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place—Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions | | |
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| property—Latin for to flow
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| | place—Latin for Copenhagen | | |
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| | celestial body—Greek for Sun | | |
| | place—Latin for Stockholm | | |
| | property—Greek for water producing | |
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| | color—Latin for violet or indigo | | |
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color—Greek for violet colored | | |
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property—Greek for hidden | | |
| | property—Greek for to lie hidden | | |
| | person—American physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics | | |
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| | place—Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory | | |
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| | place—A district in Thessaly, Greece | | |
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property—Latin for magnet | | |
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| person—Austrian-born Swedish physicist who was first to suggest that radioactive atoms could undergo
nuclear fission | | |
| | person—Russian chemist who first devised and published the periodic table | | |
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| | place—Moscow Oblast is the federal subject of Russia where Dubna is located | | |
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| | mineral—German for St. Nicholas's Copper or the Devil's Copper | | |
| | place—Japanese pronunciation for Japan | | |
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mythical—Daughter of king Tantalus in Greek Mythology | | |
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| property—Greek for saltpeter producing |
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| | person—Swedish chemist and engineer who established the Nobel Prizes | | |
| | person—Russian-Armenian nuclear physicist known for superheavy element research | | |
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property—Greek for odor or smell | | |
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| property—Greek for acidic producing |
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| | property—Greek for light bearing | | |
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color—Spanish for little silver | | |
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| celestial body—Planet (In 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.)
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| | color—Greek for green twin | | |
| | mythical—He stole fire from the gods in Greek mythology | | |
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| | place—Latin name for the Rhine | | |
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color—Greek for rose or rose colored | | |
| | person—German physicist who won
the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 | | |
| | color—Latin for dark red or deepest red | | |
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| | person—New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry | | |
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| | place—Latin for Scandinavia | | |
| | person—American chemist who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Edwin Mattison McMillan | | |
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| celestial body—Greek for Moon | | |
| | mineral—Latin for flint or hard stone | | |
| | word—Anglo-Saxon for silver | | |
| | word—Medieval Latin for a headache remedy | |
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| | word—Sanskrit for sulphur | | |
| | mythical—Latin name for the King of Lydia in Greek mythology | | |
| | property—Greek for artificial | | |
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celestial body—Latin for Earth | | |
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| place—Tennessee is the USA state with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and
the University of Tennessee at Knoxville | | |
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| | color—Greek for green twig | | |
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mythical—The god of war in Norse (or Scandinavian) mythololgy | | |
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| place—Ancient name for Scandinavia | | |
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mythical—Sons of the Earth goddess | | |
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| mineral—Swedish for heavy stone |
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| mythical—The goddess of beauty in Norse (or Scandinavian) mythology | | |
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property—Greek for strange or stranger | | |
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| color—Arabic for gold colored |
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References (Click the next to a value above to see complete citation information for that entry)
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Corish, J., and G. M. Rosenblatt. "Name and Symbol of the Element with Atomic Number 111 (IUPAC Recommendations 2004)." Pure and Applied Chemistry, volume 76, number 12, 2004, pp. 2101–2103. doi:10.1351/pac200476122101
Corish, J., and G. M. Rosenblatt. "Name and Symbol of the Element with Atomic Number 110 (IUPAC Recommendations 2003)." Pure and Applied
Chemistry, volume 75, number 10, 2003, pp. 1613–1615. doi:10.1351/pac200375101613
de Podesta, Michael. Understanding the Properties of Matter, 2nd edition. London: Taylor & Francis, 2002.
Emsley, John. Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Fernelius, W. C., Kurt Loening, and Roy M. Adams. "Names of Groups and Elements." Journal of Chemical Education, volume 48, number 11, 1971, pp. 730–731. doi:10.1021/ed048p730
Ghiorso, A., B. G. Harvey, G. R. Choppin, S. G. Thompson, and G. T. Seaborg. "New Element Mendelevium, Atomic Number 101." Physical Review, volume 98, number 5, 1955, pp. 1518–1519. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.98.1518
Ghiorso, A., S. G. Thompson, G. H. Higgins, G. T. Seaborg, M. H. Studier, P. R. Fields, S. M. Fried, H. Diamond, J. F. Mech, G. L. Pyle, J. R. Huizenga, A. Hirsch, W. M. Manning, C. I. Browne, H. L. Smith, and R. W. Spence. "New Elements Einsteinium and Fermium, Atomic Numbers 99 and 100." Physical Review, volume 99, number 3, 1955, pp. 1048–1049. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.99.1048
Ghiorso, Albert, Torbjørn Sikkeland, Almon E. Larsh, and Robert M. Latimer. "New Element, Lawrencium, Atomic Number 103." Physical Review Letters, volume 6, number 9, 1961, pp. 473–475. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.6.473
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1969.
Hoffman, Darleane C., Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn T. Seaborg. The Transuranium People: The Inside Story. London, England: Imperial College Press, 2000.
Jensen, William B. "Why Helium Ends in “-ium”." Journal of Chemical Education, volume 81, number 7, 2004, p. 944. doi:10.1021/ed081p944
Loss, Robert D., and John Corish. "Names and symbols of the elements with atomic numbers 114 and 116 (IUPAC Recommendations 2012)." Pure and Applied Chemistry, volume 84, number 7, 2012, pp. 1669–1672. doi:10.1351/PAC-REC-11-12-03
Öhrström, Lars, and Jan Reedijk. "Names and symbols of the elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 (IUPAC Recommendations 2016)." Pure and Applied Chemistry, volume 88, number 12, 2016, pp. 1225–1229. doi:10.1515/pac-2016-0501
Rayner-Canham, Geoff, and Zheng Zheng. "Naming Elements after Scientists: an Account of a Controversy." Foundations of Chemistry, volume 10, number 1, 2008, pp. 13–18. doi:10.1007/s10698-007-9042-1
Ringnes, Vivi. "Origin of the Names of Chemical Elements." Journal of Chemical Education, volume 66, number 9, 1989, pp. 731–738. doi:10.1021/ed066p731
Seaborg, Glenn T., and Walter D. Loveland. The Elements Beyond Uranium. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1990.
Soukhanov, Anne H., editor. The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language, 3rd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.
Tatsumi, Kazuyuki, and John Corish. "Name and Symbol of the Element with Atomic Number 112 (IUPAC Recommendations 2010)." Pure and Applied Chemistry, volume 82, number 3, 2010, pp. 753–755. doi:10.1351/PAC-REC-09-08-20
Tennant, Smithson. "On Two Metals, Found in the Black Powder Remaining after the Solution of Platina." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, volume 94, 1804, pp. 411–418. doi:10.1098/rstl.1804.0018
Wagner, H. J. "Some Footnotes on the History of Masurium." Journal of Chemical Education, volume 82, number 9, 2005, p. 1309. doi:10.1021/ed082p1309
Weeks, Mary Elvira, and Henry M. Leicester. Discovery of the Elements, 7th edition. Easton, PA: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968.