List of chemical elements named after people
This list of chemical elements named after people includes elements named for people both directly and indirectly. Of the 118 elements, 19 are connected with the names of 20 people. 15 elements were named to honor 16 scientists (as curium honours both Marie and Pierre Curie). Four others have indirect connection to the names of non-scientists. Only gadolinium and samarium occur in nature; the rest are man-made. List. These 19 elements are connected to the names of people. Seaborg and Oganessian were the living persons honored by having elements named after  them; Oganessian is the only one still alive. The four elements associated with non-scientists were not named in their honor but named for something else bearing their name: samarium for the mineral samarskite from which it was isolated; and americium, berkelium and livermorium after places named for them. The cities of Berkeley, California and Livermore, California are the locations of the University of California Radiation Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively. Other connections. Other element names have been proposed but failed to gain official international recognition. These include columbium (Cb), hahnium (Ha), joliotium (Jl), and kurchatovium (Ku), names  connected to Christopher Columbus, Otto Hahn, Irène Joliot-Curie, and Igor Kurchatov; and also cassiopeium (Cp), a name coming from the constellation Cassiopeia and is hence indirectly connected to the mythological Cassiopeia. (See the article on element naming controversies and List of chemical elements named after places.) Also, mythological entities have had a significant impact on the naming of elements. Helium, titanium, selenium, palladium, promethium, cerium, europium, mercury, thorium, uranium, neptunium and plutonium are all given names connected to mythological deities. With some, that connection is indirect: Titanium is unique in that it refers to a group of deities rather  than any particular individual. So Helios, Selene, Pallas, and Prometheus actually have two elements named in their honor. And for elements given a name connected with a group, there is also xenon, named for the Greek word "ξένον" (xenon), neuter singular form of "ξένος" (xenos), meaning 'foreign(er)', 'strange(r)', or 'guest'. Its discoverer William Ramsay intended this name to be an indication of the qualities of this element in analogy to the generic group of people. Gallium was discovered by French scientist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it in honor of France ("Gallia" in Latin); allegations were later made  that he had also named it for himself, as "gallus" is Latin for "le coq", but he denied that this had been his intention.