Editing Chemical element (section)

=== Element names ===
{{main|Naming of chemical elements}}

The naming of various substances now known as elements precedes the [[atomic theory]] of matter, as names were given locally by various cultures to various minerals, metals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, and other materials, though at the time it was not known which chemicals were elements and which compounds. As they were identified as elements, the existing names for anciently known elements (e.g., gold, mercury, iron) were kept in most countries. National differences emerged over the element names either for convenience, linguistic niceties, or nationalism. For example, German speakers use "Wasserstoff" (water stuff) for "hydrogen", "Sauerstoff" (acid stuff) for "oxygen", and "Stickstoff" (smothering stuff) for "nitrogen"; English and some other languages use "sodium" for "natrium", and "potassium" for "kalium"; and the French, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Poles prefer "azote/azot/azoto" (from roots meaning "no life") for "nitrogen".

For purposes of international communication and trade, the [[Table of chemical elements|official names of the chemical elements]] both ancient and more recently recognised are decided by the [[International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry]] (IUPAC), which has decided on a sort of international English language, drawing on traditional English names even when an element's chemical symbol is based on a Latin or other traditional word, for example adopting "gold" rather than "aurum" as the name for the 79th element (Au). IUPAC prefers the British spellings "[[aluminium]]" and "caesium" over the U.S. spellings "aluminum" and "cesium", and the U.S. "sulfur" over British "sulphur". However, elements that are practical to sell in bulk in many countries often still have locally used national names, and countries whose national language does not use the [[Latin alphabet]] are likely to use the IUPAC element names.

According to IUPAC, element names are not proper nouns; therefore, the full name of an element is not capitalised in English, even if derived from a [[proper noun]], as in [[californium]] and [[einsteinium]]. Isotope names are also uncapitalised if written out, ''e.g.,'' [[carbon-12]] or [[uranium-235]]. Chemical element ''symbols'' (such as Cf for californium and Es for einsteinium), are always capitalised (see below).

In the second half of the 20th century, physics laboratories became able to produce elements with half-lives too short for an appreciable amount of them to exist at any time. These are also named by IUPAC, which generally adopts the name chosen by the discoverer. This practice can lead to the controversial question of which research group actually discovered an element, a question that delayed the naming of elements with atomic number of 104 and higher for a considerable amount of time. (See [[element naming controversy]]).

Precursors of such controversies involved the nationalistic namings of elements in the late 19th century. For example, ''[[lutetium]]'' was named after Paris, France. The Germans were reluctant to relinquish naming rights to the French, often calling it ''cassiopeium''. Similarly, the British discoverer of ''[[niobium]]'' originally named it ''columbium'', in reference to the [[New World]]. It was used extensively as such by American publications before the international standardisation (in 1950).