WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Peter Wothers. Antimony, Gold and Jupiter's Wolf. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Peter Wothers investigates the spellbinding and extraordinary tales behind how the elements acquired their names, and delves into the often controversial circumstances surrounding the naming and origins of what could be called the fabric of our world. The naming process of new elements is no trivial matter as it can take many years to complete; he tells us of the history of this process.
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The book is not a simple etymological list of elements and their names, rather it is an exploration of the stories behind the naming of elements, both historically and in modern times, revealing how elements eventually ended up with the names they have.  

Wothers relates that in the seventeenth century, the heavenly bodies were connected with seven metals, and connections between alchemy and astronomy. Many newly discovered elements in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had names of astronomical origin.

Over time each of the heavenly bodies came to be associated with a particular day of the week, with each one of the gods from ancient mythology. These seven bodies were described by Chaucer: “the bodies I speak of here originate from the planets, the gold is assigned to the sun, the moon to silver gives his place and iron stands for Mars, the lead takes growth from Saturn and Jupiter bestows the brass, the copper derives from Venus and for his part Mercury takes in order the quicksand”. A similar verse appears in Confessio Amantis by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer.

There are currently 118 elements with four new additional proposed names: nihonium, named after Japan; moscovium – a Moscow research project; tennessine – from Tennessee; and oganesson - named after Professor Yuri Oganessian, pioneer of transactinoid element research.

Not all names are quite so obvious as to their origin. Wothers notes, “the element oxygen that is familiar to us all means acid-generator or sharp-chin in some quarters and also means vinegar merchant.” The French chemist Lavoisier 1743-94 (the father of modern chemistry) used the words hydrogen and oxygen, Greek for water-former and acid-former, in his experiments on the problem of combustion. He was severely criticised by some and he explained “ they pretend it signifies engendered by water, and not that which engenders water, when hydrogen is combined with oxygen, water is produced”.

It was believed at the time by many that metals and minerals grew from seeds, 'the seed of nature'. The author feels that there is a certain logic to this, as many elements and minerals do form only in particular regions within the Earth, with the process taking many thousands or millions of years.

He explains that although the historical links between the Sun, the Roman god Sol, and gold have been virtually forgotten, the element helium keeps the connection alive, as it was first detected in 1868 and is the first element to be discovered off our planet and is named after the Greek personification of the Sun, Helios. It was initially beloved to be a metal, but when isolated on Earth it was found to be an unreactive gas and to this day helium remains the only non-metallic element to have the suffix -ium.

Mercury shares its name with both planet and god. When visible it appears to move rapidly in its orbit around the Sun and became associated with the Messenger of the Gods, being fleet of foot. The element itself is no slouch as it is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, solidifying at -39C. Traditionally mercury is known as 'quicksilver' - 'quick' meaning 'living', as in 'the quick and the dead'. The original Latin argentum vivum literally means 'living silver'.

The chemical symbol for mercury, Hg, comes from hydragyrum, meaning 'water silver'. The alchemical symbol for mercury is derived from the staff or wand of the god, his caduceus that has been mistakenly used as a symbol by medical practices. Hermes and had nothing to do with the practice of medicine. The medical god was Asclepius, and his symbol was a staff entwined by a single serpent.

The chapter on 'Ashes and Alkalis' is comprehensive, beginning with azote or nitre meaning potassium nitrate, one of the key ingredients of gunpowder, and moves quickly to natrium that gives us the modern chemical symbol Na for the element named sodium. Ancient Egyptians collected crude salt mixtures from certain lakes and used them for a variety of purposes: cleaning, making glass, embalming and the preparation of medicines. 3000 years ago natrium was being made by nitrous waters or from solutions of lye, poured into pits and evaporated by the heat of the sun.

The production of great quantities of alkali prepared from wood ash in large pots gave rise to the new term 'Pot Ash', as described in the early eighteenth century by Herman Boerhaave. Our modern word 'potassium' deriving from pot-ash but its symbol K is from the Latinised word kalium from the Arabic kali, hence 'alkali'.

Wother takes us through these mysterious chemical treatments and discoveries with the ease of a practiced writer. The amount of information he reveals is astounding and also often entertaining. The author is a teaching fellow in the Department of Chemistry University of Cambridge and Director of Studies in Chemistry at St Catherine's College, and he was awarded an MBE in 2014 for his services to Chemistry.

I would hope for this book to be available in school libraries, but will also be enjoyed and appreciated by scientifically-interested laymen, as well as those with a more academic interest.

•  Gerrard Russell.