It's hardly just that, it has to do with the fact that there are over 100 elements and they all get a symbol that's either one or two letters long. Meaning that there are going to be some duplicates if you don't borrow names from other languages to have a sensible connection between the symbol and the element.
@@SmallSpoonBrigadeNot quite. There are enough combinations. And the alphabet is not the issue as english language uses the latin alphabet as well This list of all two-letter combinations includes 1352 (2 × 26^2) of the possible 2704 (52^2) combinations of upper and lower case from the modern core Latin alphabet.
Linguists: “Yes, but not for the reason you think.” (In linguistics, _dead_ languages are languages that aren’t spoken natively but are still used. Languages that aren’t used at all are called _extinct_ languages.)
It's _because_ Latin is a dead language that it is used for professional purposes - science, medical and legal. The meanings of Latin words are set in stone now and will never change, unlike with a living language when meanings are still fluid. Therefore, when a precise definition is necessary Latin is a good choice of language to convey this meaning.
There is a town in Russia that has been named after Cuprum because the town's main works were around mining copper. But the way they made the name for the town is interesting. They took a symbol for Copper, so Cu and added "rich" in Bashkort (because the town is located in Bashkortostan region of Russia) which is "бай" (reads as "buy"). And final name is pronounced as Seebuy, not Kubuy, because Cu resembles letters "Si" if written using cursive Cyrillic - Си. Finally, name of the town is Sibay, if you want to learn more by yourself.
Etymologists are actually not sure whether the Copper is named after Cyprus, or if it's the other way around. The only thing they are sure about is that the names are closely linked.
If anyone’s curious, they are: - Yttrium (Y) - Terbium (Tb) - Erbium (Er) - Ytterbium (Yb) (that one’s obvious) And the two named after France are Francium (Fr) and Gallium (Ga)
You know, back before we actually discovered and named element that fit there, one of the elements was labelled UUQ for Ununquadium, so Q actually did used to be on the Periodic Table. Old ones still have it!
@@TheMoonRover Exactly, why would those countries name the elements after countries in the Arabian Peninsula? Why not their own discoverer, country, city, or lab?
Lead is not from "pumbum", it's from *pLumbum* . That "L" is really critical because we get the word "plumber" from the lead pipes that used to carry our water in buildings. *EDIT: * _Okay, I see if I had waited about 1.5 seconds, I would have realized that you knew about the plumbing connection. So I went back, and I guess you did pronounce it correctly. But I'm hard of hearing, and so I accept what I read more readily than what I hear_ .
In Dutch, Na=natrium, K=kalium, same as Latin and W=wolfraam so they're easier to understand for us, but reveresely, C=koolstof, H=waterstof, N=stikstof, O=zuurstof....
Your -stof is the same as our -gen, quite smart when you actually translate them. Koolstof (coal stuff) is the element that makes coal, waterstof (water stuff) is the element that makes water (similarly with hydrogen (hydro = water, gen (genesis) = creation)). Zuurstof (NL)/Sauerstoff (DE) translates to "sour stuff" and its because it was originally believed that oxygen created acids (again - oxy (acid), gen (creation)). Stikstof took me a bit to work out, but I now love it, "Suffocate Stuff" because you can't breathe it... (the English version is just "makes Nitre")
Reminds me of Uncleftish Beholding, a book written in "Anglish", where instead of using the Latin term "matter", they'd use the word "stuff". For example, hydrogen becomes waterstuff, uranium becomes ymirstuff, etc.
@@Zaephrax Thanks for explaining the names, I was too lazy, although I didn't make the link between "stof" and "gen". Worth noting here that "stof" in Dutch actually means "dust" (or textile but that's irrelevant), not really "stuff"
Funny...As a French speaker, it never occurred to me that there will be such a gap between symbols and names. Ag -> Argent, Cu -> Cuivre, Fe -> Fer, Pb -> Plomb
As a Russian speaker, it occured to me that there is a gap between N and Azot, and some other elements (H -> vodorod, C -> uglerod, O -> kislorod, Si - kremniy, P - fosfor) and all ancient metals (Fe -> zhelezo, Ag -> serebro, Au -> zoloto, Sn -> olovo, Cu -> med', Hg -> rtut', Pb -> svinets, Sb -> sur'ma).
It makes sense that the French language has names for elements that match their symbols, as the French language directly branched from Latin. It was initially a Latin dialect.
I've seen a old German periodic table that use J for iodine, which is sort of fitting since I and J were the same letter in Latin. J was also the symbol for joliotium, an element name that wasn't adopted. This would have been named after the Joliot-Curies, so the Curie family would have had two elements named after it. I always found it odd that the symbol for arsenic is As, which meant astatine had to be At. But since Argon was discovered after arsenic, when it was decided by IUPAC that it should have a two-letter symbol (it was originally A), Ar was available.
@@neuralwarp almost right: J did not exist in ancient Latin. J was a lazy & much later shift from the sound "iu" made - as you say. I prefer the well-known example Iulius Caesar - pronounce i-you-l-i-us K-eye-sar in the original.
Neo-Latin: One of my college roommates was majoring in Classics and I remember him having to buy _Alicia in Terra Mirabili_ and _Winni il le Pu_ to read for one class.
It's pretty common to read children books when leaning another language. I still have a few from when I took French in Uni. I watched a bunch of children's programs as well😂.
In Spanish, the royal academy of the Spanish language (RAE) base in Spain, insist that the only correct name is Wolfram/Wolframio, basically as a nationalist claim over the 2 Spanish guys who name it like that. But honestly most people in Spanish, specially outside of Spain call it and know this element as Tungsten/Tungsteno
In Portuguese, iron is called “ferro”, so Fe always made sense to me. And even though gold is “ouro”, the adjective “áureo” exists, so Au was also fine.
3:26 *Oxygen Sword* Special ability - Oxidation (Causes your opponents weapon and armour to quickly deteriorate upon contact, eventually disintegrating. Only applies to equipment made from certain materials.)
When peoples say that the symbols for elements are wrong, it's because they assume that they need to be abbreviations of the element's name in English. Guess what ? They are not.
Interestingly, in Bulgarian (and in Russian, and I'd guess some other Slavic languages, but I'm only sure for these two), sodium and potassium are not problematic because our names are based on the "originals" - natrium and kalium. Then again, in our languages hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen have names different from the chemical symbol. The Russians also struggle with silicon. P.S. Tungsten is not a problem for us, too, as we call it wolfram, where the chemical symbol comes from.
Not in all slavic lauanges - in Polish Na is called "Sód", and K is called "Potas". But yeach, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen have different names in Polish too - they are calle "wodór", "węgiel", "azot" and "tlen". And Si is called "krzem".
While all element symbols have two letters today, when I was in school, Rutherfordium was called "Unnilquadium," and its symbol was UNQ. So there was, for a time, an element symbol with a Q in it.
Those were not really official symbols though. They were just placeholders. Unnilquadium just means 1-0-4, the element 104. All the new discovered elements got such an temporary symbol after discovery and before officially naming by the IUPAC.
@@shreddedwheatnevereat Arguably, the video title, implying that an internationally universal system of element symbols is somehow “wrong” if it doesn't happen to abbreviate the English name of the element in particular kind of implies something along the lines of English being the only language, or the most important language, or so, doesn't it?
I think it was the 1970s show The Facts of Life where I learned how to remember Au for Gold. When someone steals your Gold watch, you yell out, "Hey, you!" (A-U). My daughter has a silver car. I want to call it Aggie, for Ag, Silver. She won't let me. She doesn't name her car.
I got a loan at a local place for mine and named it Minty due to the color. Unfortunately, I can't drive and they tried to teach me in that one. Was in crazy accident at age 3 with father losing control of wheel in a seizure and basically replicating Diablo 2's cow level in a family friend's field. 3 cows were ran over. The year was '03.
In Malay, 1. Sodium (Na) is called natrium, 2. Potassium (K) is called kalium, 3. Iron (Fe) is called ferum, 4. Silver (Ag) is called argentum 5. Gold (Au) is called aurum, 6. Lead (Pb) is called plumbum 7. Copper (Cu) is called kuprum.
Q used to be in the periodic table for Uuq (ununquadium), the provisional name for 114 until it was confirmed that it could be synthesized. It was later renamed Flerovium (Fl)
actually it is the atomic weight shown in the video, which includes proton, neutron and electron mass with respect to isotope abundance. Atomic mass only includes the total number of neutrons and protons of the atom. Hence Carbon-12 has an atomic mass of 12 and an atomic weight of 12.011.
I really like this videoooowa A friend and i were talking about this "problem" the other daaaaayuuugh. Specifically i told him of the histories or feriumugh and kaliumuuuuugh.
What fun. I know sherbet - the fizzy sweet - as 'kali'. This i think is from dear old potassium, which kali was made from - probably a citrate salt. Perhaps. Thanks for that.
Elements are named after latin and greek words (the examples in this video and for the greek words some examples are astatine and barium), places (like californium and tenessine), planets (like uranium and neptunium), and people (like einsteinium and seaborgiun).
With the naming of elements, no source can beat the town Ytterby, because there are 4 elements named by that: Ytterbium (Yb), Yttrium (Y), Terbium (Tb) and Erbium (Er). And there are two elements, which are named after another element or have their names just from another language: Platinum (Pt) from Silver (Ag) and Molybden (Mo) from Lead (Pb).
That used to be true, but the US has more than that these days - Americum (95), Californium (97), Berkelium (98), Livermorium (115) and Tenessene (117)
@@איתןשי The US isn't a little town. I could say Europe and in addition to that four elements of Ytterby are Scandium (Sc), Germanium (Ge), Francium (Fc), Gallium (Ga), Polonium (Po) and Europium (Eu). Just from the tip of my head.
@@HalfEye79 that is true - I just wanted to mention that because people say Sweden is the country with the most elements because of Ytterby Add Darmstadtium (Ds), Dubnium (Db) and Moscovium (Mc) to your list of European elements by the way
Sb is probably the hardest symbol to remember. The other mismatchint elements are somewhat common, but not antimony. Also, In my language we just use Natrium, Kalium and Wolfram.
For more than a millennium, Latin was the language of science. But since the end of WWII Brits and US Americans think that everything has to be in English. Their advantage is, that a third of the English vocabulary (especially the more scientific words) comes from Latin. In other languages, the abbreviations in the periodic system differ more from the names in the respective languages. For Elements that have no common names in the respective language, mostly the Latin one is used.
I remember that the periodic table I saw in school had a lot of elements with 3 letters as their symbol. Guess those were placeholders as they were all in the separate box below the rest, or it was simply just out of date.
Btw. the name of cobalt comes from german "Kobold" (goblin) because cobalt ore looks like silver ore but they weren't able to refine it back then. So they thought that goblins ate the silver ore and crapped those useless minerals back where it was. They called those minerals "Kobolderz" (goblin ore)
I know that Fe stands for ferrium, Au stands for aurium, Na stands for natrium, K stands for kallium, W stands for wolfram, Cu stands for cuprium, and Pb stands for plumbum, but I don't know what Sn, Sb, Ag, or Hg stands for...
J has been used as chemical symbol for iodine in very old german chemistry. The german name for iodine is Jod, so it made sense there. With the change in the chemical symbol also the spelling for the german name slowly adapted to Iod.
Fun fact, a Swede invented the name tungsten, but the Swedes use the word ’volfram’. With a V. We Norwegians prefer ’wolfram’. BTW: Mercury is ’kvikksølv’, or "quick (rapid) silver", based on the old norse ’kviksilfr ’, a translation of ’hydrargyrum’, floating silver. We even used to say ’surstoff’ (sour/acid matter) about ’oxygen’ (oxygéne means acid maker), and ’vannstoff’ (water matter) for ’hydrogen’, German style. Not anymore. Stay confused! :-)
Element Zero, Nnn (Nilnilnilium) has several isotopes, including Vacuum and Neutron, but is never shown. The corresponding radioactive decay properties are consistent.
I'm commenting on the thumbnail before watching. They do match! Iron is Ferrum (like in ferris wheel). Gold is Aurum. Potassium is Kalium (in German). Now I'm watching to see, if I missed something.
Fun fact, nano tubes are offen referred to as nt. Some Chinese scientists created some nano tubes with copper and referred to them as nt prefixed with cu.
On gold, and also silver, i rly like their heraldic names the most; Or and Argent. Gold and Silver. Notably, if we used Or as golds name, Or wud also make for the perf elemental symbol
Glad you explained the whole neo-Latin concept in the end. I scoffed at the "Latin" word Kalium especially because the contributions of the Muslim/Arabic cultures to modern science is so often overlooked.
In Romanian for sodium and potasium we say "sodiu" and "potasiu" , but for the others is similar to latin, except we eliminated the -um suffix (cupru, fier, argint, aur, plumb, stronțiu ) For mercury we use "mercur" but in the last century "hidrargir" was also used
As you state in your video, English is not the only language in the world, and for a Spanish scientist, gold is oro. And there is a grave semiotic difference between a material and a chemical element. There is the IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, founded 1919, which sorts out the chaos on a deliberate basis: They publish tentative names and if agreed, it is the scientific standard. For the newest discoveries they again resort to Latin. Element 111, originally Roentgenium, is now officially Ununumium :-). There was a dispute about element 104 in the 1970s, whether it was discovered by a Russian or an American scientist. The name changed years later from kurchatovium to rurherfordium :-). The symbol for iodine was J (from German Jod), and replaced by I in the mid 20th century. But there is still a strong legacy and rather whimsical names. Potassium, for example, was discovered 1807 by Humphry Davy, an Englishman, who extracted it from potash. Years later, this did not sound very scientific, I think, and it was renamed after the Arabic al qaliy to Kalium, K. Al qaliy by the way also means plant ash :-)- Alkaline is still the contrary to acidic in chemistry, but it refers to the pH, and not to any element. If you study chemistry, you dive into a rather bizarre world of adapting ancient Greece, Latin, and of course names of discoverers. Hey, they are chemists, and not philoligists. As a student, I once "cooked" a compound, using the "Sandmeyer-reaction" with a beautiful artwork of glass utensils. The assistant in charge came by, estimated the scene, and said "Sandmeyer". I bowed, and said "Linhart", which is my surname. That really confused him. Chemish is its own vernacular.
In my language(Romanian), all of them match, except for 3: K - We don't say Kalium, we say "Potasiu" Na - We don't say Natrium, we say "Sodiu" N - We don't say Nitrogen, we say "Azot" Except this 3, all of them match, including gold(aur), iron(fier), lead(plumb).
In Indonesian, we don't really have any difficulties for Na and K, bcs we simply called them natrium and kalium, just like in Latin, despite of sodium and potassium.
Yakiin?? C (Carbon) = Zat arang O (Oksigen) = Zat asam N (Nitrogen) = Zat lemas CO² = zat asam arang Fe (Ferrum) = besi Ca (Calsium) = zat kapur Emas (Au), perak (Ag), emas putih (Pt),
Interesting that many people don't know why the symbols are sometimes different, because where I studied, we had to learn the symbol and both the Slovak name for the element and also the Latin name. Are the Latin names not taught in english-speaking countries?
Actually, the Latin names for Potassium and Sodium came from the name of the compounds, as isolation of these elements came centuries later. The ancients thought they were indivisible.
Bear in mind that elements like Wolfram/Tungsten, Potassium/Kalium and Sodium/Natrium are often called by the name that matches their symbols in languages other than English. The English language isn't necessarily a good representative for other living languages. In some ways, it's actually the odd one out. PS: Funnily, although Tungsten derives from Swedish (tung = heavy, sten = stone/rock), the Swedish name for the element is actually Wolfram.
Sodium and Potassium are interesting as they are already Latin words (or at least Latinate), yet they differ from Scientific Latin. (There are still many countries that would use the terms Natrium and Kalium in everyday usage, though...)
meanwhile in russian: H - Vadarót (водород) C - Uglirót (углерод) N - Azót (азот) Si - Krémniy (кремний) Fe - Zhylézo (железо) Cu - Med' (медь) As - Myshyák (мышьяк) Pb - Sviniéts (свинец) ...
No need to go to the Sicilian language: silver is argento in Italian as well 😇 And yes, our names for the elements generally reflect their Latin symbols - with exceptions like antimonio or tungsteno and differences in spelling like oro, from aurum, for gold 🙂
Hydrargyrum actually comes from the greek υδράργυρος which the second word is also the greek name of silver (Άργυρος). Many people tend to forget that certain Latin words were actually greek
A joke I love: The University of Michigan used to have a football player named Ian Gold. That’s right, Gold was his name. And whenever any of the coaches wanted to get his attention, you know what they would yell? “’Ey! You!” (Au)
Favourite element? GIVE ME GOLD!
Fluorine or Nitrogen
Bro iodine is the goat
What about oxygen, Patrick? Don’t tell me that you can live without it.
Tungsten.
It’s good for smashing stuff.
Au
I love how this summarizes as "Obviously English isn't the only language relevant in history"
Ok cuck
It's hardly just that, it has to do with the fact that there are over 100 elements and they all get a symbol that's either one or two letters long. Meaning that there are going to be some duplicates if you don't borrow names from other languages to have a sensible connection between the symbol and the element.
It just emphasizes Latin and neo Latin background in science.
The fact that there are braindead people who think the world revolves around English 💀💀💀💀
@@SmallSpoonBrigadeNot quite. There are enough combinations. And the alphabet is not the issue as english language uses the latin alphabet as well
This list of all two-letter combinations includes 1352 (2 × 26^2) of the possible 2704 (52^2) combinations of upper and lower case from the modern core Latin alphabet.
Commons: “Latin is dead.”
Scientists: “Really?”
Linguists: “Yes, but not for the reason you think.”
(In linguistics, _dead_ languages are languages that aren’t spoken natively but are still used. Languages that aren’t used at all are called _extinct_ languages.)
*Lingua Latine non mortuus est.*
Me: I don't care
It's _because_ Latin is a dead language that it is used for professional purposes - science, medical and legal. The meanings of Latin words are set in stone now and will never change, unlike with a living language when meanings are still fluid. Therefore, when a precise definition is necessary Latin is a good choice of language to convey this meaning.
Academia keeps it going.
Copper is named after Cyprus. From Greek Kupros, because ot had a lot of copper deposits.
i didn't know that! amazing
There is a town in Russia that has been named after Cuprum because the town's main works were around mining copper.
But the way they made the name for the town is interesting. They took a symbol for Copper, so Cu and added "rich" in Bashkort (because the town is located in Bashkortostan region of Russia) which is "бай" (reads as "buy"). And final name is pronounced as Seebuy, not Kubuy, because Cu resembles letters "Si" if written using cursive Cyrillic - Си.
Finally, name of the town is Sibay, if you want to learn more by yourself.
Etymologists are actually not sure whether the Copper is named after Cyprus, or if it's the other way around. The only thing they are sure about is that the names are closely linked.
Fun periodic table fact: There are 2 elements named after France, and 4 elements named after Ytterby, a small village in Sweden
If anyone’s curious, they are:
- Yttrium (Y)
- Terbium (Tb)
- Erbium (Er)
- Ytterbium (Yb) (that one’s obvious)
And the two named after France are Francium (Fr) and Gallium (Ga)
theres also Polon named after Poland!!
Also many germany related elements too
@@priyanthisandarath1365 germanium, darmstadtium...
Let's not forget Americium, Californium, and Berkelium.
Oh, and now there's Livermorium and Tennessine.
You know, back before we actually discovered and named element that fit there, one of the elements was labelled UUQ for Ununquadium, so Q actually did used to be on the Periodic Table. Old ones still have it!
Soon hopefully there will be UBQ (or 124) - Although at this rate 119 will be called Saudium, 120 Emiratium and 121 Qatarium...
@user-jd5zt4of8q wait why tho, what if other countries discover them
@@PopeVancis watch how the Gulf nations buy out the labs...
@@PopeVancis All the synthetic elements have come from labs in the USA, Russia, Germany and Japan, and there's no reason to think that'll change.
@@TheMoonRover Exactly, why would those countries name the elements after countries in the Arabian Peninsula? Why not their own discoverer, country, city, or lab?
I still remember a science teacher telling me, "Hey, you, come back with my gold" and "Aww, Gee, I only won the silver medal"
My chemistry teacher taught us Libebcnofne and Namgalsipsclar, much more ambitious. Now I've made acronyms up as far Insnsbteixe.
Lead is not from "pumbum", it's from *pLumbum* . That "L" is really critical because we get the word "plumber" from the lead pipes that used to carry our water in buildings.
*EDIT: * _Okay, I see if I had waited about 1.5 seconds, I would have realized that you knew about the plumbing connection. So I went back, and I guess you did pronounce it correctly. But I'm hard of hearing, and so I accept what I read more readily than what I hear_ .
Funnily enough in swedish we say wolfram instead of tungsten, despite the latter word originating from the language, no idea why that is though
Probably to make it more distinguishable from a joke.. which is kinda funny
Tungsten is Wolfram in German too!
I prefer wolfam ngl
It's like that in Romanian too!
@@mizukimoone8061 I’m half Romanian half Swedish lmao
In Dutch, Na=natrium, K=kalium, same as Latin and W=wolfraam so they're easier to understand for us, but reveresely, C=koolstof, H=waterstof, N=stikstof, O=zuurstof....
Your -stof is the same as our -gen, quite smart when you actually translate them. Koolstof (coal stuff) is the element that makes coal, waterstof (water stuff) is the element that makes water (similarly with hydrogen (hydro = water, gen (genesis) = creation)). Zuurstof (NL)/Sauerstoff (DE) translates to "sour stuff" and its because it was originally believed that oxygen created acids (again - oxy (acid), gen (creation)). Stikstof took me a bit to work out, but I now love it, "Suffocate Stuff" because you can't breathe it... (the English version is just "makes Nitre")
same in german, Kohlenstoff, Wasserstoff, Stickstoff (choke-stuff) und Sauerstoff (acidic stuff)
Reminds me of Uncleftish Beholding, a book written in "Anglish", where instead of using the Latin term "matter", they'd use the word "stuff". For example, hydrogen becomes waterstuff, uranium becomes ymirstuff, etc.
@@Zaephrax Thanks for explaining the names, I was too lazy, although I didn't make the link between "stof" and "gen". Worth noting here that "stof" in Dutch actually means "dust" (or textile but that's irrelevant), not really "stuff"
@@H.G.Halberddu sagst es, Luft besteht zu 78% aus erstickzeug 😂
Funny...As a French speaker, it never occurred to me that there will be such a gap between symbols and names. Ag -> Argent, Cu -> Cuivre, Fe -> Fer, Pb -> Plomb
As a Russian speaker, it occured to me that there is a gap between N and Azot, and some other elements (H -> vodorod, C -> uglerod, O -> kislorod, Si - kremniy, P - fosfor) and all ancient metals (Fe -> zhelezo, Ag -> serebro, Au -> zoloto, Sn -> olovo, Cu -> med', Hg -> rtut', Pb -> svinets, Sb -> sur'ma).
It makes sense that the French language has names for elements that match their symbols, as the French language directly branched from Latin. It was initially a Latin dialect.
In Romanian gold is 'aur' so Au works!
Yes bro, but french is not the whole world, thus the explanation video.
@@ЮраН-ь2к H - vodorod, O - kislorod, C - uglerod, Я - ebal tvoy rot
I've seen a old German periodic table that use J for iodine, which is sort of fitting since I and J were the same letter in Latin. J was also the symbol for joliotium, an element name that wasn't adopted. This would have been named after the Joliot-Curies, so the Curie family would have had two elements named after it.
I always found it odd that the symbol for arsenic is As, which meant astatine had to be At. But since Argon was discovered after arsenic, when it was decided by IUPAC that it should have a two-letter symbol (it was originally A), Ar was available.
Mendeleev also used J for iodine in his 1871 periodic table (but not his 1869 version).
Iodine's german name is "Jod", I believe thats where the J comes from
J had a Y sound. Y itself had two soulds: either ligated IJ (as in Dutch) or Ü (as in Greek).
@@neuralwarp almost right: J did not exist in ancient Latin. J was a lazy & much later shift from the sound "iu" made - as you say. I prefer the well-known example Iulius Caesar - pronounce i-you-l-i-us K-eye-sar in the original.
The thumbnail looks a lot like a certain word…
f---?
You’re not alone.
bro just says "uh" after every sentence
i know 😭😭shit lowkey urkin me
Neo-Latin: One of my college roommates was majoring in Classics and I remember him having to buy _Alicia in Terra Mirabili_ and _Winni il le Pu_ to read for one class.
It's pretty common to read children books when leaning another language. I still have a few from when I took French in Uni. I watched a bunch of children's programs as well😂.
I have a few Latin Asterix books (Asterices?) and _Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis_ .
In Spanish, the royal academy of the Spanish language (RAE) base in Spain, insist that the only correct name is Wolfram/Wolframio, basically as a nationalist claim over the 2 Spanish guys who name it like that. But honestly most people in Spanish, specially outside of Spain call it and know this element as Tungsten/Tungsteno
In Dutch and German Wolfram, Tungsten is the American slang name actually.
It's called Wolfram in most Germanic and Slavic languages. Tungsten was the Swedish name of a mineral that contains Wolfram.
In Portuguese, iron is called “ferro”, so Fe always made sense to me. And even though gold is “ouro”, the adjective “áureo” exists, so Au was also fine.
3:26
*Oxygen Sword*
Special ability - Oxidation (Causes your opponents weapon and armour to quickly deteriorate upon contact, eventually disintegrating. Only applies to equipment made from certain materials.)
When peoples say that the symbols for elements are wrong, it's because they assume that they need to be abbreviations of the element's name in English. Guess what ? They are not.
Indeed, not a single one!
Interestingly, in Bulgarian (and in Russian, and I'd guess some other Slavic languages, but I'm only sure for these two), sodium and potassium are not problematic because our names are based on the "originals" - natrium and kalium.
Then again, in our languages hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen have names different from the chemical symbol. The Russians also struggle with silicon.
P.S. Tungsten is not a problem for us, too, as we call it wolfram, where the chemical symbol comes from.
Not in all slavic lauanges - in Polish Na is called "Sód", and K is called "Potas".
But yeach, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen have different names in Polish too - they are calle "wodór", "węgiel", "azot" and "tlen". And Si is called "krzem".
fun fact tungsten is called wolfram in swedish
While all element symbols have two letters today, when I was in school, Rutherfordium was called "Unnilquadium," and its symbol was UNQ.
So there was, for a time, an element symbol with a Q in it.
dont forget ununquadium which was flerovium
Those were not really official symbols though. They were just placeholders. Unnilquadium just means 1-0-4, the element 104. All the new discovered elements got such an temporary symbol after discovery and before officially naming by the IUPAC.
There is another language besides English? Oh noooo...
@@shreddedwheatnevereat Arguably, the video title, implying that an internationally universal system of element symbols is somehow “wrong” if it doesn't happen to abbreviate the English name of the element in particular kind of implies something along the lines of English being the only language, or the most important language, or so, doesn't it?
All languages are subsets of English.
@@neuralwarphow come?
@@neuralwarp subsets?
Jesus wroteth the Bible in English. Should be ok for science, too.
I think it was the 1970s show The Facts of Life where I learned how to remember Au for Gold. When someone steals your Gold watch, you yell out, "Hey, you!" (A-U).
My daughter has a silver car. I want to call it Aggie, for Ag, Silver. She won't let me. She doesn't name her car.
I got a loan at a local place for mine and named it Minty due to the color. Unfortunately, I can't drive and they tried to teach me in that one. Was in crazy accident at age 3 with father losing control of wheel in a seizure and basically replicating Diablo 2's cow level in a family friend's field. 3 cows were ran over. The year was '03.
I know some Latin so I just remember it's aurum
4:40 Pumbum
Grammar shaming is a bit plumb. ;-)
For a video about language and origins, pointing out a mistake isn't shaming, it's educational. @@DasIllu
@@nyanSynxPHOENIXexactly. i'm still unsure whether he spelled it wrong or pronounced it wrong.
@@DoroNijimaru It's "plumbum", so it was spelled incorrectly. As for "Hydrargyrum", he spelled it correctly but pronounced it incorrectly.
I reckon Mr. Foote accidentally dropped the pipe while carrying that fancy Latin word.
I love the thumbnail spelling out Feauk
Fe yeah 😂
It's FeAuKing good
FEEAAAUUUKKKKKK!!!!!!!
Feauk the periodic table, embrace the periodic chair.
Relaxing in my periodic living room
*embrace
@@hello_hi1 how did I even manage to misspell that?
In Malay,
1. Sodium (Na) is called natrium,
2. Potassium (K) is called kalium,
3. Iron (Fe) is called ferum,
4. Silver (Ag) is called argentum
5. Gold (Au) is called aurum,
6. Lead (Pb) is called plumbum
7. Copper (Cu) is called kuprum.
Don't think you can have an oxygen sword, but you can have an iron oxide sword. It comes in a sweet red color.
a.k.a Rusty sword with +10 damage from tetanus infection
Q used to be in the periodic table for Uuq (ununquadium), the provisional name for 114 until it was confirmed that it could be synthesized. It was later renamed Flerovium (Fl)
Auric Goldfinger!
At 4:40 plumbum for lead is pronounced correctly but misspelled.
thisuh wasuh auh veryuh cooluh videuh!
Iron's old name is pretty easy to encounter in chemistry anyway
"Ferromagnetic" "ferrous oxide" etc
1:00 Actually, it's the atomic mass, not the atomic weight (or more exactly: the mass in grams of 1 mol of the said element).
actually it is the atomic weight shown in the video, which includes proton, neutron and electron mass with respect to isotope abundance. Atomic mass only includes the total number of neutrons and protons of the atom. Hence Carbon-12 has an atomic mass of 12 and an atomic weight of 12.011.
I really like this videoooowa
A friend and i were talking about this "problem" the other daaaaayuuugh.
Specifically i told him of the histories or feriumugh and kaliumuuuuugh.
We should get a vid of where all the elements names came from that’d be awesome
It really would be! There are so many awesome stories, and even a number of major name changes along the way!
8:06 "It [oxygen] was only isolated in 1774, after the fall of Western Rome." Also some time after the fall of Eastern Rome, or Byzantium, in 1453.
That whole Phlogiston thing ..
I guess thulium's chemical symbol Tm makes it a trademark.
What fun.
I know sherbet - the fizzy sweet - as 'kali'. This i think is from dear old potassium, which kali was made from - probably a citrate salt. Perhaps.
Thanks for that.
Bold choice of elements for the thumbnail. That selection feauks.
Elements are named after latin and greek words (the examples in this video and for the greek words some examples are astatine and barium), places (like californium and tenessine), planets (like uranium and neptunium), and people (like einsteinium and seaborgiun).
you knew exactly what you were doing by arranging the elements that way on the thumbnail
Cool video. I love the fact that anyone can learn almost anything by using the internet. We really do live in the information age.
in germany we still use natrium, kalium and wolfram
Nice! I now may finally get one of those periodic table question right on the The Chase.
So does mercury come from Hg wells?
No, but it is why his story, The War of the Worlds, was dramatized in 1938 by The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
4:46 Actually, they don’t just contain Lead, they were made of Lead.
A plumber was originally a name for a lead worker and included those who did lead work on roofs.
With the naming of elements, no source can beat the town Ytterby, because there are 4 elements named by that: Ytterbium (Yb), Yttrium (Y), Terbium (Tb) and Erbium (Er).
And there are two elements, which are named after another element or have their names just from another language: Platinum (Pt) from Silver (Ag) and Molybden (Mo) from Lead (Pb).
That used to be true, but the US has more than that these days - Americum (95), Californium (97), Berkelium (98), Livermorium (115) and Tenessene (117)
@@איתןשי
The US isn't a little town. I could say Europe and in addition to that four elements of Ytterby are Scandium (Sc), Germanium (Ge), Francium (Fc), Gallium (Ga), Polonium (Po) and Europium (Eu). Just from the tip of my head.
@@HalfEye79 that is true - I just wanted to mention that because people say Sweden is the country with the most elements because of Ytterby
Add Darmstadtium (Ds), Dubnium (Db) and Moscovium (Mc) to your list of European elements by the way
Your thumbnail is feauking brilliant 😂
Because English isnt the only language in the world.
Sb is probably the hardest symbol to remember. The other mismatchint elements are somewhat common, but not antimony.
Also, In my language we just use Natrium, Kalium and Wolfram.
Fun fact: the word for gold in Lithuanian is Auksas, so the Au makes perfect sense
For more than a millennium, Latin was the language of science. But since the end of WWII Brits and US Americans think that everything has to be in English. Their advantage is, that a third of the English vocabulary (especially the more scientific words) comes from Latin. In other languages, the abbreviations in the periodic system differ more from the names in the respective languages. For Elements that have no common names in the respective language, mostly the Latin one is used.
I remember that the periodic table I saw in school had a lot of elements with 3 letters as their symbol.
Guess those were placeholders as they were all in the separate box below the rest, or it was simply just out of date.
Plumbum is also the name of a heavy object used for making sure something is level vertically.
Btw. the name of cobalt comes from german "Kobold" (goblin) because cobalt ore looks like silver ore but they weren't able to refine it back then. So they thought that goblins ate the silver ore and crapped those useless minerals back where it was. They called those minerals "Kobolderz" (goblin ore)
I just love that at least for English, the Chlorine and Noble group (except Helium) are intentionally ended with -ine and -on, respectively.
I know that Fe stands for ferrium, Au stands for aurium, Na stands for natrium, K stands for kallium, W stands for wolfram, Cu stands for cuprium, and Pb stands for plumbum, but I don't know what Sn, Sb, Ag, or Hg stands for...
J has been used as chemical symbol for iodine in very old german chemistry. The german name for iodine is Jod, so it made sense there. With the change in the chemical symbol also the spelling for the german name slowly adapted to Iod.
Fun fact, a Swede invented the name tungsten, but the Swedes use the word ’volfram’. With a V. We Norwegians prefer ’wolfram’. BTW: Mercury is ’kvikksølv’, or "quick (rapid) silver", based on the old norse ’kviksilfr ’, a translation of ’hydrargyrum’, floating silver. We even used to say ’surstoff’ (sour/acid matter) about ’oxygen’ (oxygéne means acid maker), and ’vannstoff’ (water matter) for ’hydrogen’, German style. Not anymore. Stay confused! :-)
Mercury can also be called quicksilver in English as well!
J was used in early days for "Jod" (German of Iodine). I had an old Periodic Table from the 1960s from Germany, where Iodine is "J".
Feauk is a weird way to spell it, but alright
This is the exact video i needed at this moment
Element Zero, Nnn (Nilnilnilium) has several isotopes, including Vacuum and Neutron, but is never shown. The corresponding radioactive decay properties are consistent.
I propose it be named Atheon, after the mythical god of Atheism. Symbol A.
- Spartans!, whsat is your profession!?
- Gold!, gold!, gold!
In french the iron, lead and work well fe for "fer", pb for "plomb" and ag for "argent"
I'm commenting on the thumbnail before watching. They do match! Iron is Ferrum (like in ferris wheel). Gold is Aurum. Potassium is Kalium (in German). Now I'm watching to see, if I missed something.
6:44 I have to ask, is the Wolfram-Alpha app related to this at all?
Natron, reminds of Lake Natron in Tanzania known for its highly alkaline nature, with sodium salts
Fun fact, nano tubes are offen referred to as nt. Some Chinese scientists created some nano tubes with copper and referred to them as nt prefixed with cu.
Might I suggest a future video about where the names of series on the periodic table came from? E.g., alkalis, lanthanides, actinides.
On gold, and also silver, i rly like their heraldic names the most; Or and Argent. Gold and Silver.
Notably, if we used Or as golds name, Or wud also make for the perf elemental symbol
Glad you explained the whole neo-Latin concept in the end. I scoffed at the "Latin" word Kalium especially because the contributions of the Muslim/Arabic cultures to modern science is so often overlooked.
In Romanian for sodium and potasium we say "sodiu" and "potasiu" , but for the others is similar to latin, except we eliminated the -um suffix (cupru, fier, argint, aur, plumb, stronțiu )
For mercury we use "mercur" but in the last century "hidrargir" was also used
Yoy, sunt român si naveam nicio idee ca se zicea si "hidrargir"
@@mizukimoone8061 posibil sa se mai zica la tara, dar cred ca e rar folosit. Prima oara am auzit de la bunicii mei.
Copper and tin symbols (Cu and Sn) has one of the letter in common with name (no "u" in copper or "s" in tin)
As you state in your video, English is not the only language in the world, and for a Spanish scientist, gold is oro. And there is a grave semiotic difference between a material and a chemical element. There is the IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, founded 1919, which sorts out the chaos on a deliberate basis: They publish tentative names and if agreed, it is the scientific standard. For the newest discoveries they again resort to Latin. Element 111, originally Roentgenium, is now officially Ununumium :-). There was a dispute about element 104 in the 1970s, whether it was discovered by a Russian or an American scientist. The name changed years later from kurchatovium to rurherfordium :-). The symbol for iodine was J (from German Jod), and replaced by I in the mid 20th century. But there is still a strong legacy and rather whimsical names. Potassium, for example, was discovered 1807 by Humphry Davy, an Englishman, who extracted it from potash. Years later, this did not sound very scientific, I think, and it was renamed after the Arabic al qaliy to Kalium, K. Al qaliy by the way also means plant ash :-)- Alkaline is still the contrary to acidic in chemistry, but it refers to the pH, and not to any element. If you study chemistry, you dive into a rather bizarre world of adapting ancient Greece, Latin, and of course names of discoverers. Hey, they are chemists, and not philoligists. As a student, I once "cooked" a compound, using the "Sandmeyer-reaction" with a beautiful artwork of glass utensils. The assistant in charge came by, estimated the scene, and said "Sandmeyer". I bowed, and said "Linhart", which is my surname. That really confused him. Chemish is its own vernacular.
In my language(Romanian), all of them match, except for 3:
K - We don't say Kalium, we say "Potasiu"
Na - We don't say Natrium, we say "Sodiu"
N - We don't say Nitrogen, we say "Azot"
Except this 3, all of them match, including gold(aur), iron(fier), lead(plumb).
In finnish potassium is kalium, sodium is natrium and tungsten is wolframi. Possibly some other element names match the symbol as well.
Volframi
In Indonesian, we don't really have any difficulties for Na and K, bcs we simply called them natrium and kalium, just like in Latin, despite of sodium and potassium.
anyway... we called Al as aluminium just like in British English.
Yakiin??
C (Carbon) = Zat arang
O (Oksigen) = Zat asam
N (Nitrogen) = Zat lemas
CO² = zat asam arang
Fe (Ferrum) = besi
Ca (Calsium) = zat kapur
Emas (Au), perak (Ag), emas putih (Pt),
In french, Fe (iron) is fer, Ag is argent, Pb is (I think) plomb and Cu is cuivre.
Interesting that many people don't know why the symbols are sometimes different, because where I studied, we had to learn the symbol and both the Slovak name for the element and also the Latin name. Are the Latin names not taught in english-speaking countries?
Samozrejme, že nie sú.
The Latin names used to be taught. I know them all, but that was from the 1970's. Not sure if it is still being done. Sigh.😐
As a hungarian i smile on thease problems because we use almost all of the latin names so we can learn them more easily!
Actually, the Latin names for Potassium and Sodium came from the name of the compounds, as isolation of these elements came centuries later. The ancients thought they were indivisible.
Tungsten is called wolfram in Russia, and potassium is called kalium. Mercury is called rtut’, lead is called svinets, tin is olovo.
Bear in mind that elements like Wolfram/Tungsten, Potassium/Kalium and Sodium/Natrium are often called by the name that matches their symbols in languages other than English. The English language isn't necessarily a good representative for other living languages. In some ways, it's actually the odd one out.
PS: Funnily, although Tungsten derives from Swedish (tung = heavy, sten = stone/rock), the Swedish name for the element is actually Wolfram.
My favorite fact about tungsten is that in English we use a Swedish word, but in Swedish we call it wolfram :3
Nicely done. Enjoyable. Thanks.
There's still a lot of Latin (and Greek) terminology used in medicine and law. I took a class in college on how to decipher it.
I think the cover picture is trying to tell me something different XD
"Fe, Au, K"
i think if you say it it will sound like fuck or smth
The funny thing about "Tungsten" coming from Swedish is that the Swedish name for said element is "Wolfram".
9:25 In Polish Iodine is jod, and in common use has J as it's symbol
In Bulgaria, we normally call Tungsten - Wolfram, and we mostly use the latin names + our own.
Sodium and Potassium are interesting as they are already Latin words (or at least Latinate), yet they differ from Scientific Latin. (There are still many countries that would use the terms Natrium and Kalium in everyday usage, though...)
meanwhile in russian:
H - Vadarót (водород)
C - Uglirót (углерод)
N - Azót (азот)
Si - Krémniy (кремний)
Fe - Zhylézo (железо)
Cu - Med' (медь)
As - Myshyák (мышьяк)
Pb - Sviniéts (свинец)
...
What you missed was zinc which is the only element from ancient era which uses the English word.
No need to go to the Sicilian language: silver is argento in Italian as well 😇
And yes, our names for the elements generally reflect their Latin symbols - with exceptions like antimonio or tungsteno and differences in spelling like oro, from aurum, for gold 🙂
I had to back up and look at The Hobbit again, my blurry vision made it say Hobbitsville split on two lines
Hydrargyrum actually comes from the greek υδράργυρος which the second word is also the greek name of silver (Άργυρος). Many people tend to forget that certain Latin words were actually greek
A joke I love: The University of Michigan used to have a football player named Ian Gold. That’s right, Gold was his name. And whenever any of the coaches wanted to get his attention, you know what they would yell? “’Ey! You!” (Au)