Chemical elements in East Asian languages

The names for chemical elements in East Asian languages, along with those for some chemical compounds (mostly organic), are among the newest words to enter the local vocabularies. Except for those metals well-known since antiquity, most elements had their names created after modern chemistry was introduced to East Asia in the 18th and 19th century, with more translations being coined for those elements discovered later.

While most East Asian languages use—or had used—the Chinese script, only the Chinese use the characters as the predominant way of naming elements. On the other hand, the Japanese and Koreans primarily employ native alphabets for the names of the elements (Katakana and Hangul, respectively).

Chinese

In Chinese, characters for the elements are the last officially created and recognized characters in the Chinese writing system. Unlike characters for unofficial varieties of Chinese (e.g., written Cantonese) or other now-defunct ad hoc characters (e.g., those by the Empress Wu), the names for the elements are official, consistent, and taught (with Mandarin pronunciation) to every Chinese and Taiwanese student who has attended public schools (usually by the first year of middle school).

Native characters

Some metallic elements were already familiar to the Chinese, as their ores were already excavated and used extensively in China for construction, alchemy, and medicine. These include the traditional "Five Metals" (五金) — gold (金), silver (銀), copper (銅), iron (鐵), and tin (錫) — as well as lead (鉛) and mercury (汞).

Some non-metals were already named in Chinese as well, because their minerals were in widespread use. For example,

• carbon (碳) in the form of charcoal
• boron (硼) as part of borax
• sulfur (硫) had been used to make gunpowder since at least the 10th century in China.

European Pronunciation-based Characters

Most elements, however, remained unknown to the Chinese until they were isolated during the Industrial Age. These new elements therefore required new characters, which were invented using the phono-semantic principle. Each character consists of two parts, to signify the meaning and to hint at the sound:

1. The semantic (meaning) part is also the radical of the character. It refers to the element's usual state at room temperature and standard pressure. There are only four radicals used for elements: 釒/钅 (jīn "gold") for solid metals, 石 (shí "stone") for solid non-metals, 水/氵 (shuǐ "water") for liquids, and 气 (qì "air") for gases.
2. The phonetic (sound) part represents the character's pronunciation and is a partial transliteration of the element. For each element character, this is a unique phonetic component. Since there are over 100 elements already discovered, there are over 100 different phonetic components used in naming the elements.

Examples of characters derived from European pronunciations

Semantic	Phonetic	Element	Source
金 +	里 lǐ	= 鋰 (lǐ)	lithium
金 +	甲 jiǎ	= 鉀 (jiǎ)	kalium, Latin name for potassium
金 +	內 nèi	= 鈉 (nà)*	natrium, Latin name for sodium
金 +	弟 tì or dì	= 銻 (tì)*	antimony
金 +	臬 niè	= 鎳 (niè)	nickel
金 +	鬲 gé	= 鎘 (gé)	cadmium
金 +	烏 wū	= 鎢(wù)*	Wolfram, German name for tungsten
金 +	必 bì	= 鉍 (bì)	bismuth
金 +	由 yóu	= 鈾 (yóu)	uranium
金 +	呂 lǚ	= 鋁 (lǚ)	aluminium
石 +	典 diǎn	= 碘 (diǎn)	iodine
气 +	亥 hài	= 氦 (hài)	helium
气 +	弗 fú	= 氟 (fú)	fluorine
气 +	乃 nǎi	= 氖 (nǎi)	neon
*where the derived pronunciation differs (in tone or in sound)

The "water" radical (水) is rarely used, since only two elements (bromine and mercury) are truly liquid at standard room temperature and pressure (see List of elements by melting point). Both of their characters are not based on the European pronunciation of the elements' names. Bromine (溴), the only liquid nonmetal at room temperature, is explained in the following section. Mercury (汞), now grouped with the heavy metals, was long classified as a kind of fluid in ancient China.

Meaning-based characters

A few characters, though, are not created using the above "semantic-phonetic" design, but are "semantic-semantic", that is, both of its parts indicate meanings. One part refers to the element's usual state (like the semantic-phonetic characters). However, the second part indicates some additional property or function of the element. Such elements are:

Semantic	Semantic	Element	English	Note
金 +	白 (white)	= 鉑 bó†	platinum	See note ¥
氵 +	臭 (stinky)	= 溴 xiù†	bromine	odorous (brómos in Greek also means "stench")
气 +	羊, short for 養 (to nourish/foster)	= 氧 yǎng‡	oxygen	A continuous supply of oxygenated air nourishes almost all animals
气 +	巠, short for 輕 (light-weight)	= 氫 qīng	hydrogen	the lightest of all elements
气 +	彔, short for 綠 (green)	= 氯 lǜ	chlorine	greenish yellow in color
气 +	炎, short for 淡 (diluted)	= 氮 dàn‡	nitrogen	"dilutes" breathable air
石 +	粦, short for 燐 (glow)	= 磷 lín	phosphorus	emits a faint glow in the dark

† These are the source characters' older alternate — but now almost obsolete — pronunciation. Nowadays 白 (white) is normally pronounced bái in the standard Mandarin dialect, although traditionally bó was preferred. Similarly, 臭 (smelly) is almost always pronounced chòu, as opposed to xiù, a now-archaic reading.

‡ Regarding the seeming mismatch in pronunciation: Note that the ultimate source of 氧 (yǎng)(oxygen) is not 羊 (yáng)(sheep) but 養 (yǎng)(support,maintain). Likewise, the ultimate source of 氮 (dàn)(nitrogen) is not 炎 (yán)(inflammation) but 淡 (dàn)(light,weak) .

¥ The original meaning of 鉑 is "thin sheet of gold" (now obsolete). The character was not associated with platinum until modern time, since platinum was known in the Old World only after the Age of Discovery

Notes

Mainland vs. Taiwan names (*used in Hong Kong and Macao,**exclusively in Hong Kong and Macao)

silicon	14	硅* guī	矽 xī
technetium	43	锝 dé	鎝* dā
francium	87	钫/**鈁 fāng	鍅 fǎ
neptunium	93	镎 ná	錼* nài
plutonium	94	钚 bù	鈽* bù
americium	95	镅 méi	鋂* měi
berkelium	97	锫/**錇 péi	鉳 běi
californium	98	锎 kāi	鉲* kǎ
einsteinium	99	锿 āi	鑀* ài

A minority of the "new characters" are not actually new inventions, or rather, they happen to coincide with archaic characters, whose original meanings have long been lost to most people. For example, 鏷 (protactinium), 鈹 (beryllium), 鉻 (chromium), and 鑭 (lanthanum) are obscure characters meaning "raw iron", "needle", "hook", and "harrow (tool)" respectively.

The majority of the elements' names are the same in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, merely being variants of each other, since most of the names were translated by a single body of standardization prior to the PRC-ROC split. However, since francium and the transuranium elements were discovered during or after the split, they have different names in Taiwan and in Mainland China.

The isotopes of hydrogen deuterium (D) and tritium (T) are written 氘 dāo and 氚 chuān respectively in both simplified and traditional writing. 鑀 is used in Taiwan for both einsteinium (mainland China: 锿) and ionium, the radioactive isotope of thorium, element number 90.

Tables

Many operating systems and web browsers do not support the display of some of the newer elements, since the characters for elements with atomic numbers 104 and above were only added in Unicode 3.1 (2001) as surrogate pairs that are part of the CJK Ideographs Extension B character set.

Simplified characters for elements 104 and above (except the character for darmstadtium) have not been encoded as of Unicode 6.0 (October 2010) and are thus given only as images in the simplified characters table below. The simplified character for darmstadtium (element 110) has been added to Unicode 6.0 (U+2B7FC