(I did not make the map, the typo is not my doing.)
There’s been wars waged for less.
Sodium, in Romania, can either be “sodiu” or “natriu”
But nobody actually calls it “natriu”, it’s just a thing you hear once in school to help you remember why the symbol is Na and then never use it again.
I found a reddit post why sodium and potassium have 2 names:
There was some argument over what to call the elements. They were discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy who called them “sodium” from the Latin “sodanum” for a compound of sodium used as a treatment for headaches, and “potassium” from English “potash” which was the method used to extract potassium salts.
But a German chemist, Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert, proposed “natronium” from Neo-Latin as a reference to “natron” which is what the Egyptians called sodium carbonate, and “kalium” from the Neo-Latin of the Arabic “al qalyah” which means “ashes”.
So in English they were “sodium” and “potassium”, but in German they were “Natronium” (now simply “Natrium”) and “Kalium”.
It just so happened that the guy who invented the modern chemical symbols was Jöns Jacob Berzelius. He was Swiss and spoke German, so he derived the symbols from the German names.
Jöns was swedish, not swiss.
Is that why potassium is K on the periodic table?
And now that I think about it, sodium is Na…
Damnit, our educational system has been telling us we are wrong the whole time! Sneaky bullshit!
Berzelius was an asshole. Antimony is Antimon* in most languages, even in German, but he chose Sb from Latin stibium
Found one more, with a similar double name, but there he used at least the German name: Tungsten (W) is Wolfram in German
There are also Sn (Stannous) for Tin, Pb (Plumbum) for Lead, Fe (Ferrum) for Iron, Hg (Hydrargyrum) for Mercury, Au (Aurum) for Gold and Ag (Argentum) for Silver.
That’s almost as much fun as Davy pointlessly waffling between alumium, aluminum, and aluminium till we once again ended up with people who speak the same language using different terms.
In German, we also have “Pottasche” in as the trivial name of potassium carbonate
Note Asche = ash
Can we get a map of tungsten (W) next time?
Fun fact: Tungtsten ist W/Volfram in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish where its English name, tungt sten meaning “heavy stone”, originates from.
You mean Wolfram (T)?
Estonia over there with “Natrium, but longer”
Meanwhile, they don’t have time to say ‘sodium’ in Poland. They’re way too busy.
Kneel before sód
Well The Lithuanian one is wrong the person who made this couldn’t even copy from google translate. it is natris
Is that where the word nitre comes from?
That’s where the (Na) comes from. Anything starting with Nit comes from Nitrogen (N)
I prefer “Atom 11”
Undecium or is it Ununium?
Funny how they write “name of sodium (Na)”. I mean the abbreviation is right there…
