Buzz
Oxygen is represented by the symbol O. Logical, right? Calcium is denoted by Ca. Seems fine. Hydrogen? H. Cobalt? Co. Lithium? Li. You’re with me so far. But Lead? Pb.
Hold on a minute!
There’s no p or b in lead. No h or g in mercury. No f or e in iron. No w in tungsten. What’s happening here? It seems like chemists might have been influenced by a bit of C2H5OH when assigning these symbols.
There are actually a few factors that help clarify the disconnect between the names and symbols of elements, according to Sam Kean, the author of The Disappearing Spoon and occasional contributor to Mental_Floss.
“One explanation can be found in the international nature of the periodic table,” Kean wrote for Slate a few years ago. Elements were discovered and/or isolated by scientists across Europe and the world. Sometimes these discoveries weren’t documented (like with gold or iron, which were known to ancient civilizations and haven’t been attributed to a single discoverer), or they were made independently in different regions, with no clear original source. As Kean explains, “the same substance might have different names across different regions for decades.”
In the spirit of compromise, an element might have a name derived from one language and a symbol from another. Take tungsten, for example. Its symbol is W, says Kean, “because the Germans refer to the element as ‘wolfram.’ It was a compromise between competing nations' claims.”
Other discrepancies between names and symbols arose from scientists referencing classical texts in Arabic, Greek, and Latin, as well as the tradition of “gentleman scientists” from earlier times using a blend of Latin and Greek as a universal scholarly language. For instance, the Hg symbol for mercury comes from the Latin hydragyrum, meaning “water silver,” and the Pb symbol for lead comes from its Latin name, plumbum.
