Mastering the Peri'god'ic Table by Rob Kyff on Creators.com

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Mastering the Peri'god'ic Table

In ancient Rome, Mercury (the messenger of the gods) was constantly zipping around from deity to deity. So when the Romans needed a word for the poisonous metallic element that flowed quickly at room temperature, they named it "Mercury" for their speedy courier.

In fact, when it comes to naming elements, Greek and Roman gods pretty much ran the (periodic) table.

When a new planet swam into the ken of British astronomer William Herschel in 1781, for instance, he named it "Uranus," after the Roman god of the sky. Seven years later, when the German chemist Martin Klaproth discovered a radioactive new element, he decided it would be trendy and hip to name it after the new planet — voila! — "uranium."

And when English clergyman William Gregor detected another new metallic element in 1791, Klaproth was again on the case. He wanted to name the newcomer for a child of Uranus, but somehow "Uranus, Jr." just didn't work.

So he named it for all of Uranus' children: a race of giants known as "the Titans." And so "titanium" was born.

Seven years later, obviously on a roll, Klaproth dubbed another new element "tellurium," for Tellus, a.k.a. "Terra," the Roman goddess of earth.

But was Klaproth finished? Was he content to simply sit back and listen to people clap for what he had wrought? Don't bet on it.

In 1801, Sicilian astronomer Giuseppi Piazzi spotted what seemed to be a strange, small planet orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Because Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, had been viewed as the protector of Piazzi's native Sicily, he named the new object, which we now know to be an asteroid, "Ceres."

So just two years after Piazzi's discovery, the existence of another new element was verified. You can guess what happened next. Klaproth, always eager to mimic the god-given nomenclature of astronomers, called the new element "Cerium."

Then in 1868, with Klaproth gone but his naming methods not forgotten, British astronomer Norman Lockyer noticed that one element detected in the sun's spectrum could not be correlated with any element found on Earth. So he named this new, solar-generated element "helium" for "helios," the Greek god of the sun.

Chemistry students, stay tuned. In a future column, we'll explore the godly origins of the names of four more elements: niobium, plutonium, tantalum and selenium.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254