Talk:List of chemical element naming controversies/Archive 1

Untitled
I do not know how to edit. But the stuff there about how Niobium is still called Columbium is bullshit! The reference is from 1914!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.18.162.155 (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, I've removed it. 86.164.111.103 (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

minor naming/spelling issues
I am wondering whether there should be an entry in this article about sulfur/sulphur, aluminium/aluminium, and caesium/cesium? I think that IUPAC tried to be prescriptive on these around 1970, but backed down a decade or two later and allowed minor transAtlantic variations of this sort. Am I right? Can anyone provide references? would an entry about this issue on this page be appropriate? --58.179.129.242 (talk) 02:37, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Grammar of page title
Nouns used attributively are not pluralised (e.g. "border patrol", not "borders patrol", even if the patrol in question patrols more than one border). The one exception is "women" as in "women athletes", but that is simply a mistake (from the close similarity in sound of the singular and plural) that has become so widespread as to be the usual form. Consequently, this page's title should use the singular. 2.25.142.23 (talk) 00:54, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Hahnium redirect
I daresay that whenever you see "hahnium" used in a publication, it will almost certainly mean element 105, not element 108: everyone rightly complained that the reshuffling (also rutherfordium from 104 to 106) was incredibly confusing. Double sharp (talk) 14:24, 30 July 2016 (UTC)


 * So confusing that most people have forgotten that these names were each used for two different elements. And this article now only mentions 104 for Rf and 105 for Ha (or Hn?). The alternate numberings are mentioned in a table at Symbol (chemistry) but with very little context. Perhaps the discarded numbers should be discussed a little in this article, as they did form part of the controversy at the time. Dirac66 (talk) 19:29, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
 * There were even more proposed compromises, as you can read in The Transuranium People, including one that moved hahnium as far as 109, and another that banished it and all the American suggestions in exchange for accepting seaborgium at 106. Berkeley also claimed discovery of 110 a month before the final 1997 IUPAC recommendations and proposed hahnium for it. But in terms of scientific papers, nobody really paid attention to the reshufflings. Either element 105 was called hahnium (if you were aligned with the Americans); nielsbohrium (if you were aligned with the Russians); or you just called it "element 105" (or, if making periodic tables, "unnilpentium") to be neutral to both sides. This is also helped by the fact that no names were proposed for elements 106 to 109 (and 110, which nearly got dragged into the controversy by Berkeley) until after the TWG report came out, so that there were only two years in which "hahnium" could possibly have been used for element 108 – years in which many scientists protested against the IUPAC names of 1994 – compared with the more than 20 years of use of "hahnium" for element 105. Double sharp (talk) 03:52, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Vanadium/Vanadin
Regarding element 23, the article claims that Sefström "chose to call the element vanadium". The referenced source however, as well as modern Swedish, uses the word vanadin. Thus I seriously doubt that Sefström actually called it vanadium and maybe the article should be updated to reflect that. Fomalhaut76 (talk) 10:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Dirac66 (talk) 03:25, 12 January 2017 (UTC)