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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Russian words in English
Message-ID: <CyIDz4.GuM@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <ag.2.00098E4E@interaccess.com> <Cy8s7M.3vv@spss.com> <38um81$cfj@gordon.enea.se> <CyHt14.JtB@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 23:16:16 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <CyHt14.JtB@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <38um81$cfj@gordon.enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>>A nit: Mendelevium has atom number 101, so it cannot reasonably
>>have been a known substance in 1917.
>
>It was in 1955, at the U of California, Berkeley, that it first saw
>the light, so I wonder in what sense its name is a Russian word.
>Did a Russian-speaking researcher call the new element _mendelevij_
>and an English-speaking one anglicise that by modifying its ending
>to _-ium_?  Sounds very unlikely.  Anyway, isn't there some kind of
>international forum that gives names to newly discovered elements?
>Names which are not, strictly speaking, native to any language?
>
>Btw, Md was obtained by helium-ion bombardment of einsteinium-253.
>Is that a German word?  Or a Yiddish one?
>

There's a Commission on Atomic Weights of the International Union
of Pure and Applied Chemistry that has to ratify the names.
Really.

Elements 104 and 105 (according to my Enc.Britt. 1985) had not
been ratified:  US scientists (Ghiorso et al.) had called them
Rutherfordium (Rf) and Hahnium (Ha), Soviet scientists (Flerov et al.) 
had proposed Kurchatovium (Ku) and Nielsbohrium (Ns).

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
