The names for chemical elements in East Asian languages, along with those for some chemical compounds (mostly organic), are among the newest words to enter the local vocabularies. Except for those metals well-known since antiquity, the names of most elements were created after modern

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

was introduced to East Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries, with more translations being coined for those elements discovered later. While most East Asian languages use—or have used—the

Chinese script Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

, only the

Chinese language Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39& ...

uses

logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...

s as the predominant way of naming elements. Native phonetic writing systems are primarily used for element names in Japanese (

Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

), Korean (

Hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...

) and Vietnamese ( chữ Quốc ngữ).

Chinese

In Chinese, characters for the elements are the last officially created and recognized characters in the

Chinese writing system Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rathe ...

. Unlike characters for unofficial varieties of Chinese (e.g., written Cantonese) or other now-defunct ''ad hoc'' characters (e.g., those by the Empress Wu), the names for the elements are official, consistent, and taught (with

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

pronunciation) to every Chinese and Taiwanese student who has attended public schools (usually by the first year of

middle school Middle school, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school, is an educational stage between primary school and secondary school. Afghanistan In Afghanistan, middle school includes g ...

). New names and symbols are decided upon by the China National Committee for Terminology in Science and Technology.

Native characters

Some metallic elements were already familiar to the Chinese, as their

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

s were already excavated and used extensively in China for construction,

alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

, and medicine. These include the long-established group of "Five Metals" (五金) —

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

(金),

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

(銀/银),

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

(銅/铜),

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

(鐵/铁), and tin (錫/锡) — as well as

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

(鉛/铅) and mercury (汞). Some non-metals were already named in Chinese as well, because their minerals were in widespread use. For example, *

boron Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three ...

(硼) as part of

borax The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

(碳) in the form of

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

sulfur Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...

(硫) had been used to make

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...

since at least the 10th century in China.

Characters based on European pronunciations

However, the Chinese did not know about most of the elements until they were isolated during the Industrial Age. These new elements therefore required new characters, which were invented using the phono-semantic principle. Each character consists of two parts, one to signify the meaning and the other to hint at the sound: The semantic (meaning) part is also the radical of the character. It refers to the element's usual state at

room temperature Room temperature, colloquially, denotes the range of air temperatures most people find comfortable indoors while dressed in typical clothing. Comfortable temperatures can be extended beyond this range depending on humidity, air circulation, and ...

and

standard pressure Standard temperature and pressure (STP) or standard conditions for temperature and pressure are various standard sets of conditions for experimental measurements used to allow comparisons to be made between different sets of data. The most used ...

. Only four radicals are used for elements: / (''jīn'' "gold; metal") for solid metals, (''shí'' "stone, rock") for solid non-metals, / (''shuǐ'' "water") for liquids, and (''qì'' "air, steam") for gases. The phonetic (sound) part represents the character's pronunciation and is a partial transliteration of the element's name. For each element character, this is a unique phonetic component. Since 118 elements have been discovered, over 100 phonetic components are used in naming the elements. Because many characters in modern Chinese are homophones, including for tone, two different phonetic components can be pronounced the same. Current practice dictates that new names should avoid being homophonous with previous element names or with organic functional groups. However, this rule was not rigorously followed in the past, and confusingly, the names of tin (锡) and selenium (硒) both have the pronunciation ''xī'' with the same tone. The alternative pronunciation ''xí'' for tin is recommended by the National Committee for Approval of Terms in Science and Technology (全国科学技术名词审定委员会). 锡 (tin) and 硒 (selenium) are not homophones in Nanjing Mandarin, which was the prestige dialect of Chinese when most elements were named, which was until the late 19th century. The phonetic component of 锡, 易 (''yì''), was accurate when the character was invented around 3000 years ago, but not now because of sound change. In

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...

锡 was an entering tone character, a closed syllable ending in -p/-t/-k (or -ʔ in some modern dialects). But 硒 was constructed in the late 19th century using the (still accurate) phonetic 西 (''xī''), which in Middle Chinese was a level tone character, an open syllable with a vowel ending. In Beijing Mandarin, the variety on which Standard Modern Chinese is based, stop consonant endings of syllables were dropped, and the entering tone was merged into the other tones in a complex and irregular manner by the 16th–17th centuries, and 锡 and 西 both became Tone 1 (high tone) characters. In dialects that preserve the entering tone, like Nanjing Mandarin and Shanghainese and Cantonese, 锡 retains a -k or -ʔ ending and 锡 and 西 (硒) are pronounced differently. This sometimes causes difficulty in verbal communication, as Sn and Se can both be divalent and tetravalent. Thus, SnO₂ 二氧化锡 and SeO₂ 二氧化硒 would be pronounced identically, as ''èryǎnghuàxī'', if not for the variant ''xí'' for 锡. To avoid further confusion, P.R.C. authorities avoided using the name 矽 ''xī'' (or any tonal variants) for silicon. (In Taiwan 矽 is pronounced ''xì''.) :† / is primarily pronounced as ''nèi'', but less commonly as ''nà'', the source of /. Likewise, the primary pronunciation of is ''dì'', but the alternate reading of ''tì'' gave rise to /. :* The derived pronunciation differs (in tone or in sound) from the pronunciation of the element. The "water" radical () is not used much here, as only two elements (bromine and mercury) are truly liquid at standard room temperature and pressure. Their characters are not based on the European pronunciation of the elements' names. Bromine (), the only liquid nonmetal at room temperature, is explained in the following section. Mercury (), now grouped with the

heavy metals upright=1.2, Crystals of lead.html" ;"title="osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead">osmium, a heavy metal nearly twice as dense as lead Heavy metals is a controversial and ambiguous term for metallic elements with relatively h ...

, was long classified as a kind of fluid in ancient China.

Meaning-based characters

A few characters, though, are not created using the above "phono-semantic" design, but are "semantic-semantic", that is, both of its parts indicate meanings. One part refers to the element's usual state (like the semanto-phonetic characters), while the other part indicates some additional property or function of the element. In addition, the second part also indicates the pronunciation of the element. Such elements are:

Usage in the nomenclature for simple inorganic compounds

Simple covalent binary inorganic compounds E''_m''X''_n'' are named as : ''n'' X 化 (''huà'') ''m'' E (with ''n'' and ''m'' written as Chinese numerals), where X is more electronegative than E, using the IUPAC formal electronegativity order. 化 as a full noun or verb means 'change; transform(ation)'. As a noun suffix, it is equivalent to the English suffixes -ized/-ated/-ified. It is the root of the word 化学 (huàxué) 'chemistry'. For example, P₄S₁₀ is called 十硫化四磷 (shíliúhuàsìlín) (literally: 'ten sulfur of four phosphorus', 'decasulfide of tetraphosphorus'). As in English nomenclature, if ''m'' = 1, the numerical prefix of E is usually dropped in covalent compounds. For example, CO is called 一氧化碳 (yīyǎnghuàtàn) (literally: 'one oxygen of carbon', 'monoxide of carbon'). However, for compounds named as salts, numerical prefixes are dropped altogether, as in English. Thus, calcium chloride, CaCl₂, is named 氯化钙 (literally: 'chloride of calcium'). The Chinese name for FeCl₃, 氯化铁, literally means 'chlorinated iron' and is akin to the archaic English names 'muriated iron' or 'muriate of iron'. In this example, 氯 is 'chlorine' and 铁 is 'iron'. There is a Chinese analog of the ''-ic''/-''ous'' nomenclature for higher/lower oxidation states: ''-ous'' is translated as 亚 (''yà'', 'minor; secondary'): for example, FeCl₂ is 氯化亚铁 and FeCl₃ is 氯化铁. In a four-way contrast, ''hypo-'' is translated as 次 (''cì'', 'inferior; following') and ''per-'' is translated as 高 (''gāo'', 'high, upper'). For example, the acid HClO is 次氯酸 "inferior chlorine acid", HClO''₂'' is 亚氯酸, HClO''₃'' is 氯酸, and HClO''₄'' is 高氯酸. In this example, the character 酸 (suān, 'sour') means (organic or inorganic) acid. The more modern Stock nomenclature in which oxidation state is explicitly specified can also be used: thus, tin(IV) oxide (SnO₂) is simply 氧化锡(IV).

Recently discovered elements

In 2015, IUPAC recognised the discovery of four new elements. In November 2016, IUPAC published their formal names and symbols: nihonium (₁₁₃Nh),

moscovium Moscovium is a synthetic element, synthetic chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Mc and atomic number 115. It was first synthesized in 2003 by a joint team of Russian and American scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Resea ...

(₁₁₅Mc),

tennessine Tennessine is a synthetic element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements and is the penultimate element of the Period 7 element, 7th ...

(₁₁₇Ts), and

oganesson Oganesson is a synthetic element, synthetic chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow, Russia, by a joint ...

(₁₁₈Og). Subsequently, in January 2017, the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies published four naming characters for these elements. The National Academy for Educational Research under the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China on Taiwan published an almost identical list (the only differences being the use of the traditional Chinese metal radical '釒' in place of the simplified Chinese form '钅' for nihonium and moscovium) in April 2017. For traditional Chinese, nihonium and moscovium were then existing characters; while in simplified Chinese, only moscovium already existed in the

Unicode Standard Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 cha ...

. The missing characters were added to Unicode version 11.0 as urgently-needed characters in June 2018. The

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

for these symbols are: : Nihonium: Traditional: Simplified: Nihonium zh-hans

(''nǐ'') : Moscovium: Traditional: Simplified: (''mò'') : Tennessine: Both Traditional and Simplified: Tennessine_zh

(''tián'') : Oganesson: Both Traditional and Simplified: Oganesson_zh-hans

(''ào'')

In the periodic table

Pronunciations for some elements differ between mainland China and Taiwan, as described in the article. Simplified characters and mainland Chinese pronunciations are shown above. Some of the characters for the

superheavy element Superheavy elements, also known as transactinide elements, transactinides, or super-heavy elements, or superheavies for short, are the chemical elements with atomic number greater than 104. The superheavy elements are those beyond the actinides in ...

s may not be visible depending on fonts.

Notes

A minority of the "new characters" are not completely new inventions, as they coincide with archaic characters, whose original meanings have long been lost to most people. For example, 鈹 (

beryllium Beryllium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, hard, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with ...

), 鉻 (

chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

), 鑭 ( lanthanum), and 鏷 (

protactinium Protactinium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pa and atomic number 91. It is a dense, radioactive, silvery-gray actinide metal which readily reacts with oxygen, water vapor, and inorganic acids. It forms various chemical compounds, in which p ...

), are obscure characters meaning " needle", "

hook A hook is a tool consisting of a length of material, typically metal, that contains a portion that is curved/bent back or has a deeply grooved indentation, which serves to grab, latch or in any way attach itself onto another object. The hook's d ...

", " harrow", and "raw iron", respectively. Some elements' names were already present as characters used in the names of members of the

House of Zhu The House of Zhu was the imperial house that ruled the Ming dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644. Rump states of the Ming dynasty (collectively known as the Southern Ming) continued in the southern region until 1662, but the territory gradually d ...

. In the early

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

, the

Hongwu Emperor The Hongwu Emperor (21 October 1328– 24 June 1398), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizu of Ming, personal name Zhu Yuanzhang, courtesy name Guorui, was the List of emperors of the Ming dynasty, founding emperor of the Ming dyna ...

established a rule that his descendants' given names must follow the order of the

Five Phases ( zh, c=五行, p=wǔxíng), usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents, is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including terrestrial and celestial rela ...

per generation, and should have a character including the radical for one of the Five Phases. Some later descendants had to adopt rarely used characters, and even created new characters to fit this rule, which were later readopted for chemical elements. For example, *

radium Radium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in alkaline earth metal, group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, ...

(鐳/镭) from (朱慎鐳, 1572–1598), Prince Yonghe Gongyi *

polonium Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tel ...

(釙/钋) from (朱徵釙, 1440–1469), Prince Hanhui *

cerium Cerium is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Ce and atomic number 58. It is a hardness, soft, ductile, and silvery-white metal that tarnishes when exposed to air. Cerium is the second element in the lanthanide series, and while it ...

(鈰/铈) from (朱恩鈰, 1460–1497), Prince Yuanling Xuanmu. Most element names are the same in Simplified and

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

, merely being variants of each other, since most of the names were translated by a single body of standardization before the PRC- ROC split. However, elements discovered close to, during, or after the split sometimes have different names in Taiwan and in mainland China. In Hong Kong, both Taiwanese and mainland Chinese names are used. A few pronunciations also differ even when the characters are analogous:

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. ...

gǔ (PRC) / gū (ROC);

palladium Palladium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1802 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas (formally 2 Pallas), ...

bǎ (PRC) / bā (ROC); tin xī (PRC) / xí (ROC);

antimony Antimony is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Sb () and atomic number 51. A lustrous grey metal or metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

tī (PRC) / tì (ROC);

pō (PRC) / pò (ROC);

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

yóu (PRC) / yòu (ROC); bohrium bō (PRC) / pō (ROC). The isotopes of hydrogen – protium (¹H),

deuterium Deuterium (hydrogen-2, symbol H or D, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen; the other is protium, or hydrogen-1, H. The deuterium nucleus (deuteron) contains one proton and one neutron, whereas the far more c ...

(D) and

tritium Tritium () or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of ~12.33 years. The tritium nucleus (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of the ...

(T) – are written 氕 ''piē'', 氘 ''dāo'' and 氚 ''chuān'', respectively, in both simplified and traditional writing. 鑀 is used in Taiwan for both einsteinium (mainland China: 锿) and ionium, a previous name for the

isotope Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their Atomic nucleus, nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemica ...

thorium Thorium is a chemical element; it has symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a weakly radioactive light silver metal which tarnishes olive grey when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft, malleable, and ha ...

-230.

History

In 1871,

John Fryer John Fryer may refer to: *John Fryer (physician, died 1563), English physician, humanist and early reformer *John Fryer (physician, died 1672), English physician *John Fryer (travel writer) (1650–1733), British travel-writer and doctor *Sir John ...

and Shou Xu proposed the modern convention of exclusively using single characters for element names.

Japanese

Like other words in the language, elements' names in Japanese can be native ('' yamatokotoba''), from China ( Sino-Japanese) or from Europe (''

gairaigo is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chine ...

'').

Names based on European pronunciations

Even though the Japanese language also uses

(''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

''), it primarily employs ''

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

'' to

transliterate Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

names of the elements from

European languages There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three larges ...

(often German/ Dutch or

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

ia Germanor English). Elements not listed in any of the tables below have their names follow English, like tungsten.

Native names

On the other hand, elements known since antiquity are Chinese loanwords, which are mostly identical to their Chinese counterparts, albeit in the ''

Shinjitai are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found in ''shinjitai'' are also found in simplified Chinese characters, but ''shinjitai'' is generally not as exten ...

'', for example, iron () is ''tetsu'' ( Tang-dynasty loan) and lead () is ''namari'' ( native reading). While all elements in Chinese are single-character in the official system, some Japanese elements have two characters. Often this parallels colloquial or everyday names for such elements in Chinese, such as 水銀/水银 () for mercury and 硫黃/硫黄 () for sulfur. A special case is tin (, ''suzu''), which is more often written in ''

'' ().

Meaning-based names

Some names were later invented to describe properties or characteristics of the element. They were mostly introduced around the 18th century to Japan, and they sometimes differ drastically from their Chinese counterparts. The following comparison shows that Japanese does not use the radical system for naming elements like Chinese.

Korean

As ''

Hanja Hanja (; ), alternatively spelled Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period. () ...

'' (Sino-Korean characters) are now rarely used in

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

, all of the elements are written in ''

''. Since many Korean scientific terms were translated from Japanese sources, the pattern of naming is mostly similar to that of Japanese. Namely, the classical elements are

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, with new elements from

. But recently, some elements' names were changed. For example: Pre-modern (18th-century) elements often are the Korean pronunciation of their Japanese equivalents, e.g.,

Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, some of the elements known since antiquity and

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

times are

s from Chinese, such as copper (''đồng'' from ), tin (''thiếc'' from ), mercury (''thuỷ ngân'' from ), sulfur (''lưu huỳnh'' from ), oxygen (''dưỡng khí'' from ; ''oxi'' or ''oxy'' is the more common name) and platinum (''bạch kim'' from ; ''platin'' is another common name). Others have native or old Sino-Vietnamese names, such as ''sắt'' for iron, ''bạc'' for silver, ''chì'' for lead, ''vàng'' for gold, ''kền'' for nickel (''niken'' or ''nickel'' are the more common names) and ''kẽm'' for zinc. In either case, now they are written in the

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...

. Before the Latin alphabet was introduced, ''sắt'' was rendered as , ''bạc'' as , ''chì'' as , ''vàng'' as , ''kền'' as and ''kẽm'' as in ''

Chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters ...

''. The majority of elements are shortened and localized pronunciations of the European names (usually from French). For example: * ''Phosphorus'' becomes ''phốtpho'' and ''phosphor''. * The -''ine'' suffix is absent, e.g., ''chlorine'', ''iodine'' and ''fluorine'' become ''clo'', ''iốt'' (or ''iod'') and ''flo'', respectively; compare French ''chlore'', ''iode'', ''fluor''. * The -''um'' suffix is lost, e.g., ''caesium'' becomes ''xêzi'' (or ''caesi''), pronounced ; compare the French ''césium'', pronounced (whereas the English is ). ** Similarly, ''beryllium'', ''tellurium'', ''lithium'', ''natrium'' (sodium), and ''lanthanum'' become ''berili'', ''telua'', ''liti'', ''natri'', and ''lantan'' respectively * The -''gen'' suffix is lost, e.g., ''nitrogen'', ''oxygen'' and ''hydrogen'' become ''nitơ'', ''ôxy'' and ''hiđrô'', respectively A minority of elements, mostly those not suffixed with -''ium'', retain their full name, e.g., * Tungsten (aka wolfram) becomes ''volfram''. * Bismuth becomes ''bitmut''. * Aluminium becomes ''nhôm'' (), because the ending has a similar pronunciation. It was the first element to be known in English in Vietnam. * Elements with the -''on'' suffix (e.g.

noble gas The noble gases (historically the inert gases, sometimes referred to as aerogens) are the members of Group (periodic table), group 18 of the periodic table: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), radon (Rn) and, in some ...

es) seem to be inconsistent. ''Boron'' and ''silicon'' are respectively shortened to ''bo'' and ''silic''. On the other hand, ''neon'', ''argon'', ''krypton'', ''xenon'' and ''radon'' do not have common shorter forms. * Unlike the other

halogen The halogens () are a group in the periodic table consisting of six chemically related elements: fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), iodine (I), and the radioactive elements astatine (At) and tennessine (Ts), though some authors would ...

s, ''astatine'' retains its suffix (''astatin'' in Vietnamese). * Antimony is shortened to ''antimon'', and arsenic to ''asen''; these names are similar to the German ones (''Antimon'' and ''Arsen'', respectively). Some elements have multiple names, for instance, potassium is known as ''pô-tát'' and ''kali'' (from ''kalium'', the element's Latin name). Update in 2018 General Education Program, chemistry section: (At page 50) * Integration principles: Chemical nomenclature is used according to recommendations of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) with reference to Vietnamese Standards (TCVN 5529:2010 and 5530:2010 of the Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality, Decision No. 2950-QD/BKHCN of the Ministry of Science and Technology), consistent with Vietnamese practice, gradually meeting the requirements of unification and integration. * Practical principles: Use the names of 13 elements commonly used in Vietnamese: gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, aluminum, zinc, sulfur, tin, nitrogen, sodium, potassium and mercury; At the same time, there are English terms for easy reference. Compounds of these elements are named according to IUPAC recommendations

References

*Wright, David (2000). ''Translating Science: The Transmission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial China, 1840–1900''. Leiden; Boston: Brill. See especially Chapter Seven, "On Translation".

External links

Periodic tables

Interactive table in Traditional Chinese

Interactive table in Simplified Chinese

Interactive table in Japanese

Interactive table in Korean

Interactive table in Vietnamese

English-Chinese periodic table of elements

Articles

The Chinese Periodic Table: A Rosetta Stone for Understanding the Language of Chemistry in the Context of the Introduction of Modern Chemistry into China

A New Inquiry into the Translation of Chemical Terms
by John Fryer and Xu Shou
Chinese Terms for Chemical Elements

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