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Kovinda Karunanayake

Why is the element Na called sodium and not natrium in English?

Anders Wahlberg  Follow

In German, we do! ;-) And in some other languages as well! ;-) It’s just you native English speakers who don’t! :-D

In the PSE (PTE) there are some more elements with different German names:

Na: Natrium = Sodium

K: Kalium = Potassium

W: Wolfram = Tungsten

Hg : Quecksilber/Hydrargyrum = Mercury/Quicksilver

Bi: Bismut/Wismut = Bismuth

And we have some names that don’t fit to the ones mentioned in PSE:

H: Wasserstoff (water-stuff) = Hydrogen (meaning: where water originates from)

N: Stickstoff (suffocating-stuff)= Nitrogen

O: Sauerstoff (sour-stuff) = Oxygen

C: Kohlenstoff (coal-stuff) = Carbon

These names are of alchemic origin.

By knowing the real names of the elements you can get an idea where they originate from. Like Cu: Copper. Egypt got its “red metal” from a famous island called Cyprus. So one of copper’s first names was Cyprum. Over the years it became cuprum… copper!

Cobalt: In the past people knew cobalt as well but thought it was a kind of silver. As it was impossible to work with it the people thought there had been kobolds/goblins that ate the silver and “shitted” it out again. So the precious silver was cursed.

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Bryan P.  Follow

Based off the key words: “is sodium the english word for natrium”

from bing: The scientific name of sodium is “ Natrium ” from which its symbol ‘Na’ is derived. Naming and History There are two routes of the name. Sodium got its name from the English word “ Soda ”. This was because Humphry Davy used caustic soda for its isolation. The other was from the Medieval Latin word “ sodanum ” which means “ headache remedy ”.

thought of course i dont fully know so research yourself

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