I say Neptunium, you say Poseidonium...

[pne]

I was amused, when looking at the Greek Periodical Table of Elements, to find that a couple of element names had been "Hellenised".

Specifically, "Cerium" is "Demetrium" and "Neptunium" is "Poseidonium".

That fits the way that planets, for example, are named; Greek uses the corresponding Greek god rather than the Latin one, so for example, the one with the big rings is not "Saturn" but rather "Kronos". (In order, they are, from memory, Hermes - Aphrodite - Earth (Gaia) - Ares - Zeus - Kronos - Uranus (Ouranos) - Poseidon. Pluto is just Pluto, though.)

So with the elements, we have the Neptune = Poseidon correspondence as well as Ceres = Demeter. (Compare also "cereals", which are "demetriacs" in Greek.)

I must admit I was a bit disappointed that Lawrencium is "Lorensio" rather than "Lavrendio". But it seems that the newer ones tend to be written phonetically (according to modern Greek pronunciation) rather than taking the spelling as the base.

Comments

[pauamma]

I'm somewhat disappointed they didn't call Uranium Caelium or something. But then, maybe it would get to easy to confuse it with Kalium.

[pne]

Who is "they"? I don't suppose you mean the Greeks?

According to Wikipedia, uranium was named after Uranus, which had been discovered not long before.

So I suppose the blame is with whoever named Uranus that, rather than Caelus.

[pauamma]

But doesn't it also mean "sky" in Greek?

[pne]

"Uranus" does indeed mean "sky" in Greek.

A fair number of mythological figures had names that mean things; I suppose you could consider them personified concepts (that's what Wikipedia calls them in the sidebar).

[steorra]

I suppose that with the 'early' planets (i.e., up till Saturn), the Greek names are likely older than the Latin ones.