Let’s turn our attention now to other kind of acids. You know what I’m talking about: carboxylic acids. Here’s the simplest one (a):
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If we compare the structure (a) with that of our old friend, carbonic acid (b), we’ll notice that the only difference between them amounts to one oxygen atom.
Many of the chemical names referred today to as “common” or “trivial” — as opposed to “systematic” — at the time were very much systematic. Many of them, in fact, remain systematic because there is a system behind them.
Observe the structure (a):
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Its molecular formula, H2SO4, is probably the second most-known formula in the world after H2O. We can rewrite it as [SO2(OH)2]. There’s nothing easier than to create a completely systematic additive name for (a): dihydroxidodioxidosulfur. However, almost nobody uses this name because there is much more famous one: sulfuric acid.
Systematic name formation in chemistry typically happens through compounding, derivation, or mix of both. The semantic modification of a combining form through umlaut-like vowel change as seen in alkanes/alkenes/alkynes appears to be unique. Its origin could be traced to the 1866 publication of August Wilhelm von Hofmann [1]; I probably would never know about it if not for an illuminating blog post by Joe Dixon [2].
In an extended footnote, Hofmann proposed to call the first ten alkanes as follows: methane, ethane, propane, quartane, quintane, sextane, septane, octane, nonane and decane.
In a number of IUPAC publications, the entities that are referred to as “stems” include
Before we go any further, we have to distinguish between the terms “root”, “stem” and “base”, which are often used interchangeably even in linguistic literature.
With “endings” out of the way, shall we move on to “prefixes”?
In a number of IUPAC publications, the entities that are referred to as “prefixes” include
I like “qualifiers”. I also don’t mind saying “multiplicative prefix” or “configurational prefix” as long as we understand that they actally might be not prefixes, just like vegetarian sausages are not sausages and white chocolate is not chocolate.
All three words are derived from Σελήνη, Greek for the Moon. Ironically, only fictitious Selenites have a “real” lunar connection.
.png) (1) |  (2) |
Selenite (1) — not to be confused with selenate or selenide — is named similarly to other oxoanions of “ous” acids, such as sulfite or nitrite. The systematic name recommended by the Red Book is trioxidoselenate(2−). Now, Berzelius gave the element selenium its name by analogy with tellurium, which, in its turn, was named after Tellus, Latin for Earth. (Do you follow the logic?) The Mineral Information Institute gives an alternative explanation:
This is a reference to the silvery-gray color of metallic, non-crystalline selenium.
A similar line of thinking is responsible for naming of selenite (2):
From the Greek σελήυη, for “moon”, in allusion to the moon-like white reflections of the mineral or to the quality of the light transmitted by semi-pellucid gypsum slabs of cleavages used as windows.
Fine, but not as touching as this childhood belief:
When we were studying chemistry and the teacher talked about selenium, I thought that selenium was named after a Mexican pop star Selena who died during my childhood.
Speaking of Mexico: the world’s largest natural crystals, some as long as 11 meters, consist of selenite (2) and are found in Cueva de los Cristales in Chihuahua, Mexico.
The al of “alchemy” is an Arabic article, but what about the rest of the word? Wikipedia mentions theories favouring Egyptian, Greek or Persian origin of the root. Whatever the etymology, it looks like ancient Egyptians knew quite a lot of chemistry.
This table of Egyptian symbols for the metals (don’t think any of them is in Unicode) misses two or three metals known to ancient Egyptians. According to Hamed A. Ead,
tin was used in the manufacture of bronze, and cobalt has been detected as a coloring agent in certain specimens of glass and glaze. Neither metal occurs naturally in Egypt, and it seems probable that supplies of ore were imported from Persia.
Mercury <...> is stated to have been found in Egyptian tombs of from 1500—1600 B.C.Perhaps not surprisingly, the terminology used in ancient Egyptian chemical literature sometimes was deliberately misleading:
The use of the trade names for the purpose of concealing the character of the substance used where secrecy seemed desirable was not unknown at that period.
The secret names as the later alchemists used extensively: “blood of the serpent”, “blood of Hephaistos”, “blood of Vesta”, “seed of the lion”, “seed of Hercules”, “bone of the phyasimian”, etc.
The term “blood of the dove” used in the papyrus, von Lippmann has identified from other sources as meaning red lead or sometimes cinnabar.
The name of chromium is derived from the Greek χρωμα (colour), because many of chromium compounds have bright colours. Chromium is also the name of the open-source browser project behind Google Chrome. Chrome is a hacker slang for the graphical user interface. The Chrome logo (a) features Google colours while the Chromium logo (b) is almost monochrome.
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I liked the idea of Chrome for Linux without Google’s branding. I have followed this instruction to the letter to install Chromium on my Acer Aspire One netbook and it worked beautifully. Chromium certainly lacks lot of Firefox’s functionality but it does most things I need. Plus, it is very fast and you can change the appearance of browser using themes.
‘Calcium’ is the name given by Sir Humphry Davy to the metal that he first isolated by electrolysis in 1808. It is derived from Latin calx (lime) which most likely came from Greek χάλιξ (pebble, limestone). The English word ‘chalk’ is also derived from calx. My inner folk etymologist has successfully linked chalk with ‘calculation’ (via the blackboard, of course), but it seems that the connection is a bit older than blackboard: Latin calculus is simply a ‘little pebble’ used in calculations on an abacus. (Latin for chalk is not calx but creta, thus Cretaceous period.)
Not everything that starts with ‘calcium’ is a calcium compound. For instance, this chapter of Invitrogen’s Guide to Fluorescent Probes and Labeling Technologies contains a section on Calcium Green, Calcium Yellow, Calcium Orange and Calcium Crimson indicators. These compounds, upon binding Ca2+, exhibit a strong increase in fluorescence emission intensity. I suppose the corresponding fluorescent complexes then should be named something like ‘calcium Calcium Crimson’ and so on.
Some years ago, I’ve circulated this list among my colleagues at the EBI. I think it may be of interest to the readers of this blog as well. Here goes:
Copper was named after Cyprus, francium and gallium after France, germanium after Germany, polonium after Poland, ruthenium after Russia, and americium after (the United States of) America. Magnesium was named after Magnesia region in Greece, hassium after the land of Hesse (Hessen) in Germany, and californium after California. In addition, europium got his name after (continent of) Europe while the names of both scandium and thulium have something to do with Scandinavia. However, indium was named not after India but because of blue (indigo) line in its atomic spectrum. As for cities and villages, lutetium was named after Paris, hafnium after Copenhagen, holmium after Stockholm, strontium after Strontian in Scotland, berkelium after Berkeley in California, dubnium after Dubna in Russia*, and rather unpronounceable darmstadtium after Darmstadt in Germany. Four elements (yttrium, erbium, terbium, ytterbium) took their names after otherwise little known Ytterby in Sweden. Rhenium was named after the (river) Rhine. All the place-name elements, except for germanium, are metals.
Apart from Argentina, I cannot think of any other country named after a metal or any other element (unless you count Cyprus again, which well could have been named after copper; the history is not very clear here). According to the Wikipedia, the smallest of Canary Islands, El Hierro (Spanish for ‘iron’) originally had a name ‘Hero’, later mutated into ‘Hierro’ and further latinised as ‘Ferro’ while having nothing to do with iron. Lead, South Dakota also has nothing to do with lead (metal). I am sure there are plenty of placenames featuring coinage metals (gold, silver, copper) in a variety of languages, but I better stop for now.
* Dubna is the only town I know that has both flag and coat of arms featuring a ‘popular culture’ atom symbol ⚛
