List of chemical element name etymologies
This article lists the etymology of chemical elements of the periodic table. History Throughout the history of chemistry, several chemical elements have been discovered. In the nineteenth century, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table, a table of elements which describes their structure. Because elements have been discovered at various times and places, from antiquity through the present day, their names have derived from several languages and cultures. Named after places Forty-one of the 118 chemical elements have names associated with, or specifically named for, places around the world or among astronomical objects. Thirty-two of these have names tied to the places on the Earth and the other nine have names connected to bodies in the Solar System: helium for the Sun; tellurium for the Earth; selenium for the Moon; mercury (indirectly), uranium, neptunium and plutonium for the major planets (note: Pluto was still considered a planet at the time of plutonium's naming); cerium for the dwarf planet Ceres (also considered a planet at the time of naming) and palladium for the asteroid Pallas. Named after people Nineteen elements are connected with the names of twenty people (as curium honours both Marie and Pierre Curie). Fifteen elements were named after scientists;