We say it the original correct way in the US
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Sir Humphrey Davy named it “Alumium”
Comment on Add it to the pile of reasons to hate 'em
Wilco@lemm.ee 5 days ago
We say it the original correct way in the US. Other countries changed it for some reason. The guy that discovered it in 1808, Sir Humphrey Davy named it “Alumium” which based on Alumen (Latin for bitter salt)but quickly changed it to “Aluminum”. I swear I remember reading that he kept getting shit on by the science community and his friends for naming a metal “bitter salt” in Latin … but can’t find a reference.
His colleagues in Britain did mess with him and start using the name “Aluminium” … exactly because it ended in “ium” like ALL the other elements (Oxygenium, Carbonium, Ironium, Zincium, Nitrogenium, and the like). They US just kept the name the discoverer wanted instead of giving into those British asshats that just wanted to troll Sir Davy.
He also isolated Magnesium and named it “magnium”, but later changed to magnesium. The guy just couldnt settle on names. Again, in my version of reality it is because his friends kept giving him shit.
gmtom@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Wilco@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I explained the whole naming process. You gotta read it. The US was given the name as Aluminum and did not change it when the British changed it a third time.
gmtom@lemmy.world 4 days ago
But aluminum is nit the original name and you explain that. It’s also not the correct way either.
Wilco@lemm.ee 4 days ago
Welcome to ignore. Everyone else understood the discussion … you are the outlier.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Dude, seriously — say the words in your head as you read them.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The only reason it’s called ‘Aluminum’ in the US is that name was popularised in the Webster’s dictionary in the US as he took the name that marketers were using at the time (as they thought it sounded fancy like Platinum). Prior to that it was widely called ‘Aluminium’ in the US as well as the rest of the world - as it was the dominant name scientifically, and nobody else used it as it wasn’t widely commercially used.
This is all on Wikipedia, dunno why people feel the need to make up their own stories every single time this comes up, but it does make us laugh.
Wilco@lemm.ee 3 days ago
From the Wikipedia page you linked;
Davy suggested the metal be named alumium in 1808[30] and aluminum in 1812, thus producing the modern name.[29] Other scientists used the spelling aluminium
The name Aluminium never caught on in the US. It appeared in a few books and was in a dictionary, but so we’re words like Soop (for Soup) and greef (for grief). These did not catch on, Americans just kept using Aluminum. Webster wanted to standardize words … but nobody wanted to use dawter instead of daughter. They did stop using “Gaol” and used Jail instead.
The word history was “alumium” in 1807, then changed to “aluminum” in 1808. It was not changed to “aluminium” until 1812
pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Edited my comment for more clarity. But the etymology of the spelling is all in the Wikipedia article if you’d just read that small ‘spelling’ section instead of stopping when you feel you’ve read something that backs your point. It was 100% driven by American marketers, not “Brits changing their minds”.
[…] in 1892, Hall used the Aluminum spelling in his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal, despite his constant use of the Aluminium spelling in all the patents he filed between 1886 and 1903. It is unknown whether this spelling was introduced by mistake or intentionally, but Hall preferred aluminum since its introduction because it resembled platinum, the name of a prestigious metal.[141] By 1890, both spellings had been common in the United States, the -ium spelling being slightly more common; by 1895, the situation had reversed; by 1900, aluminum had become twice as common as aluminium; in the next decade, the -um spelling dominated American usage. In 1925, the American Chemical Society adopted this spelling.[135]
Wilco@lemm.ee 3 days ago
It is what it is. The US did not accept the THIRD name change. No one really knew about the first name. Aluminium appeared in the fucking dictionary … but the US population ignored it and stayed with the second name.
Wikipedia is just citing old books … the same old books people disregarded when they refused to use the new weird name.
Webster was an idiot and was trying to change hundreds of words and the population just wasn’t having it. “Soop” instead of “Soup” was literally forced on the public, Aluminium, Dawter … do we use those? No.
Wikipedia is simply wrong. Both spellings were never equally used. Even your post confirms this, the dudes patent said “Aluminium”, but he used Aluminum instead because he liked it. This is how it was everywhere.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It probably wasnt really a willful defiance thing. It’s likely more correct to say that we kept the name because by the time they changed it officially in Europe, we had millions of students across the country that had textbooks with the name Aluminum in it, that had already been taught the original name, and if the inconsistentcy was even important enought to consider “correcting”, it was likely deemed too costly and too much of a headache to change at the time. By the time people were buying reprints/new editions/more recently written textbooks anyway, professional chemists in the US had been calling it Aluminum for years. Given how isolated we were from Europe in the early 1800s, there was very little pressure to align with them on it, and so it stayed. The longer it stayed the more likely it was to be permanent, and here we are.
But yeah, Sir Humphrey Davy was an indecisive wishy-washy namer of elements, disseminated multiple names across the world, but somehow that is our fault when we just stuck with the one we were given and everyone else changed over nitpicky conventions. It’s not the only thing that Brits shit on about American English that is entirely their invention or their mistake:
“Soccer” being a British term short for “Association Football”
The season “Fall” being a British term shortened from the phrase “The Fall of the Leaf” and directly complementary to “Spring” which comes from the phrase “The Spring of the Leaf”, which they still use despite making fun of Americans for “Fall”.
“Dove” instead of “dived”, “pled” instead of “pleaded”, “have gotten” instead of “have got”, etc. all started in Britain but were dropped there and stayed in the US.
“Herb” being pronounced with an audible “h”. The word is borrowed from French, where the h is silent, exactly like , “honorary”, and “honesty”. Neither country pronounces either of those words with an “h” sound, but that doesnt stop people like Eddie Izzard shitting on how Americans say it with a silent “h” despite the American pronunciation being, arguable, more correct given the word’s origins.
Wilco@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I suspect that if the US had adopted the name “Aluminium” Britain would have changed it again and they would be making fun of us for not calling it “Aluminiumium”.
gmtom@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think Americans vastly overestimate how much Brits care about spiting them. If anything it would be more likely for the Americans to change the name to be different from the Brits.
hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
I think you’ll enjoy this: Silent Letter Day.