Technically the guy who discovered it named it Alumium.
Alumium first, but then called it aluminum
It kinda reminds me of how the Brits invented the word “soccer” and now get their knickers in a twist if you say it in front of them.
Aluminum by Davies, who first isolated it and therefore gets to name it. Then ‘alumunium’ by Wollaston, who didn’t and therefore doesn’t.
And the Americans started off by calling it Aluminium while the Brits called it Aluminum.
Mr.Webster of dictionary fame decided to only use Aluminum in his publication so that took over.
The Brits changed to using Aluminium after a German called it as such.
Mr.Webster of dictionary fame decided to only use Aluminum in his publication so that took over.
The bigger player here is probably Charles Martin Hall, who invented* a cheap method of refining it. Turns out yeah, if it’s marketed and sold as aluminum in the US that’s what people will know it as.
Although I guess it is possible Webster’s dictionary influenced Hall’s naming choice.
I wouldn’t mind if we went back to calling it alumium, though.
* as a sidenote, also invented in France in the same year (coincidence) by Paul Héroult, thus called the Hall-Héroult process
So true! The next three elements that come right after it are Siliconium, Phosphorusium, and Sulfurium! So why wouldn’t it be Aluminium?! LOL
I mean, they did write “Almost”
Alumin would be an acceptable compromise.
Alum-
A lu min-
Alumi-
Refined Bauxite.
You know the funny thing about that is some Minecraft mods use Bauxite as the name for the ore and ingots to sidestep the debate on how to spell/pronounce the metal lol
I’m going with ‘box-ite’, and if that’s wrong somehow, I’m removing it from the server, rofl.
It was a British guy who first fucked it up. Cope, Brits.
Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol’s K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don’t have a leg to stand on.
Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can’t visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.
Most Americans aren’t actually too biased against metric, I’d say that’s a stereotype boosted by an extremely vocal minority. The real problem is that most of us can’t visualize the length of a yard or mile any better than we can a meter or kilometer. It’s more an across the board lack of education.
A kilometer is 1000 M16A4s.
You’re right, we should fix that. Helum, Lithum, Beryllum, Sodum, Magnesum.
We should also fix Platinium and Lanthanium.
Muhahahaha
What about laudanum? I take that shit like magnesium anyway
Magnesum*
First rename “Platinum”. Then we’ll talk.
Platinumium
Is it time to rename gold to Aurium instead?
You know what really grinds my gears as a non-native speaker? Salmon. Why in the motherfuckium does that word have a silent L?? Get a spelling reform you assholes.
Now try: “Colonel”
As a native speaker, I think it’s orders of magnitude worse.
Y’all are out here gonna ignore “Lieutenant” as ‘LeFtenant’ ?
TBF, Americans say Loo-ten-unt. I don’t know where the British got the F, but you can’t use the meme from the post for it!
Because the position was literally the “left tenet of the king.” His most trusted advisor would be on his right tenant and the left would be the person protecting his blind non dominant side.
Now funny enough both Leuf and lieu spellings exist since about the same time. The lieu tenant comes from the French “in lieu of,” so in lieu of the king that was the next commander. I am not etymologist but from what I understand both explanations are correct. Basically convergent evolution of the word and its meaning.
I am not an etymologist but from what I understand
As an etymologist- this is… NONSENSE. Fucking WHY the need to weigh in on things you know nothing about?
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How would you pronounce the lieu then? It comes out as leeu or loo.
It seems to have the same reason: English scholars thinking that it would be smart to adopt an orthography that doesn’t match the pronounciation, to be more consistent with latin. i.e. the opposite of what modern-day spelling reforms usually try to do.
Apparently “coronel” was first borrowed from French. No surprise there I guess, with the superfluous vowel in the middle.
But the spelling is fucked up because they changed the spelling to the Italian one without changing the pronounciation. It’s like the worst of both worlds, the “worlds” being “keep the French version” and “change spelling and pronounciation to the Italian version”.
Assert your dominance, pronounce the L.
Sometimes, I intentionally pronounce the ‘b’ in “subtle”, just to make it clear I’m not.
The word through exists and you’re upset about a little silent L
I guess I’m numb to -ough because it’s a relatively common letter sequence in English, i.e. it kind of follows a rule, but salmon is pretty much unique. And ‘through’ doesn’t have that absurd origin of “let’s add a silent letter to make it more similar to latin”.
We say aluminum in Canada too. I heard it was because aluminum was the original name but was changed to match the other elements shortly after. I guess NA never got the message though
I don’t care which you use for alu
But if you’re one of those who call it alloy, then I hope you step on a Lego.
Alloy is a mixture of different materials, not short for aluminium
who the fuck calls aluminum alloy
I have never heard of this before
I think you’d get laughed out of the room if you said that around us
IDK if I’ve heard aluminum by itself called an alloy. I do know that steel wheels are typically not called “alloy wheels” for some reason; that’s reserved for wheels made from an aluminum alloy.
Bike parts. Lots of bike parts are made of aluminum-based mystery alloy so they’re marketed as just “alloy”. It’s pretty annoying when you’re a casual builder who actually cares what your bike is made out of.
I have never noticed that on bike parts before, huh
It happens a lot in cycling circles
Copper ium? Gold ium? Lead ium? Mercury ium?
If we’re trying to fix inconsistencies in English, the periodic table is barely worth mentioning. Why are read (reed) and read (red) spelled the same? Why don’t cow and tow rhyme?
We should probably just abandon English for something better planned like Esperanto.
I’m honestly a fan of having the option to use standardised/latinised chemical element names.
Cu = Cuprum = Copper.
Hg = Hydrargyrum = Mercury. Hydrargyrum is still sometimes (very very rarely) used in English.
Pb = Plumbum = Lead. The French for lead is plomb, for example. Would clear up a lot of confusion with homographs. We already use plumb in English, as in plumb line. (The fact that it’s plumbum, not plumbium, does undermine the whole aluminium>aluminum argument obviously).
Argentum instead of silver. Plenty of languages use a variation of that already. English already uses argent in some contexts, like heraldry.
Same thing for natrium instead of sodium, also common to have a variation of that in plenty of languages.
IRC Silicium was the originally proposed name for silicon. Plenty of languages also use a variation of that.
I picked these various elements because they end in -um rather than -ium when described by their Latin names. Because I think it is funny to complain about aluminum ending in -um.
TBH in the past, I’ve argued both for the -um ending, and for the -ium ending. It really annoys some people. It’s even more annoying, when they realise that you’ve managed to annoy them with such a pedantic point.
Another one is skeptical/sceptical. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it should be with a k.”
Or the plural octopus. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it’s octopodes. Octopi is certainly wrong, because it doesn’t come from latin.”
I think I may be an energy vampire.
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Aluminuminium. Make everyone angry.
I’ll give you aluminium if you brits agree to stop pronouncing “ears” like “urrs” because it really weirds me out.
just fuck it out and call it alum
And Mathematics is singular, not plural, so shortening it would be “Math” not “Maths.”
But it’s better to appreciate differences in the pronunciations and spellings of words
Mathematics is singular
PRECISELY! Thank you for proving it! If a single maths-based event occurs then it is called ‘mathematical’, as in the singular! Meaning that the term ‘mathematics’ is plural <3
