Geographic metals
Authors: Jeff Aronson
Journal: BMJ (2007)

Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer who was supposedly murdered by a Russian agent, was poisoned by polonium. But this highly radioactive element is Polish, not Russian. It was discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska), working in Paris—a discovery for which she won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1911, having already shared the 1903 physics prize with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Antoine Henri Becquerel. She named the new element after her mother country, Poland (Latin Polonia). 

Many other elements have been named after places, usually because they were discovered there or nearby. Various parts of Europe can claim one apiece: europium itself, copper (Cyprus), germanium, rhenium (the river Rhine, Latin Rhenus), ruthenium (Russia, Latin Ruthenia), and strontium (the town of Strontian in Scotland). The district of Magnesia in Thessaly boasts two—magnesium and manganese. France has three—francium, gallium (Latin Gallia=France), and lutetium (Latin Lutetia=Paris). The United States also has three—americium, berkelium, and californium, all discovered at the University of Berkeley in California. 

But Scandinavia wins the terrestrial nomenclature battle, with seven in all. There are scandium (Latin Scandia), hafnium after Copenhagen (Latin Hafnia), and holmium after Stockholm (Latin Holmia). And the little village of Ytterby in Sweden lays claim to four, all to be found in the nearby quarry. In 1794 Johann Gadolin discovered a silicate, which he called ytterbite (later called gadolinite), from which A G Ekeberg extracted the earths (elemental oxides) yttria, erbia, and terbia. In 1828 Friedrich Wohler extracted yttrium from yttria, and in 1843 Carl Gustav Mosander extracted ytterbium, terbium, and erbium. 

To beat that we must search the skies, finding eight elements named after celestial bodies—cerium (after the asteroid Ceres), palladium (the asteroid Pallas), selenium (Selene, the moon), helium (Helios, the sun), tellurium (Tellus, the earth), uranium (Uranus), neptunium (Neptune), and plutonium (Pluto). (The last three are named after the planets (or whatever Pluto is nowadays), not the corresponding classical gods.) If one of the synthetic elements with temporary names, such as ununbium (number 112) or ununtrium (number 113), needs a non-systematic name, sednium (Sd), after Sedna, the recently discovered body that circles the sun in a highly elliptical orbit outside that of Pluto, is available. Sedna is the food goddess of the Inuit, with power over whales, seals, and polar bears, which were created from the parts of her fingers that her father cut off. When angered, she will prevent them from leaving their homes. Her other name is Arnaknagsak; anyone for arnaknagsakium? 

There is even an element named after an imaginary place—thulium. Thule (Greek, of unknown meaning) was, says Pliny, a place six days' sail north from the Orkneys, first mentioned by Polybius (circa150 bc) in his description of a voyage made by Pytheas from Massilia (Marseilles) in the late fourth century bc. At midsummer at Thule the sun did not set. Its inhabitants ate berries, oats, herbs, fruits, roots, and honey. It was surrounded by freezing fog, and to the north the sea itself was frozen. Eratosthenes situated it on the Arctic circle, Ptolemy in the Shetland Islands. Others variously identified it as Iceland, the northern tip of Denmark, or part of the northern coast of Norway. Procopius in the sixth century called it the home of the Goths. Virgil, in his Georgics, referred to “ultima Thule,” meaning the uttermost limit. Thulium was extracted in 1886 by Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran from the mineral thulite (thulium oxide), which was discovered by the Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve in 1879. Perhaps there are enough connections for thulium to be counted among the Scandinavian elements.