Aluminum vs. Aluminium

which is it? the euros say aluminium but the americans say aluminum. i must say that aluminium seems more correct given the other elements: helium, lithium, beryllium, sodium, magnesium... etc. yet, there are also quite a few without such naming conventions: hydrogen, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, flourine, neon.... etc

so which is it? what was it named for?

 

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In my opinion... we are a seperate nation. Many nations have languages and cultures completely seperate from yours. If we choose to modify the pronunciation or spelling of a word we have the right to do so.

-AntonK

 

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Don't be totally ignorant. I live in Canada and I say aluminum too. Aluminum is easier to say and it sounds better in speech I think. Maybe because I'm used to it. In any case, the founder of aluminum, Sir Humphry Davy, didn't call it aluminium, he called it aluminum.

Aluminum comes form the Latin word alumina. That sounds closer to aluminum than aluminium.

I also spell it cesium and not caesium.

 

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okay, this answered my question pretty well, though a little more antagonistically than i'd wanted.

to say that because we're a separate nation we can do it whatever way we want is fine, but in the wider scientific community it is often advisable to have international standards (as was evidenced when we lost our last Mars probe due to differences in imperial vs metric measures).

alumina was what i think i was really looking for. but it doesn't really solve anything. america sound like americum, but it's amercium. same for helios = helium, soda = sodium, chroma = chromium, etc. though there is also molybdenum, tantalum, platinum, etc. so, i guess it's really rather subjective.

sorry about the unintentionally offended canadian, i hadn't intended to be so provincial.

kami

 

International standards? When a bunch of Europeans come together in Geneva, it isn't considered in international standard, no matter how much they like to think it is.

 

yes, well. i can tell from your sig at the bottom what your politics are, but in science that plays a minor role. the idea that i am trying to express is that if you want to communicate with others (something that is crucial in scientific work) you must necessarily have a common language to use. in science this is generally mathematics, but in order to minimize errors, and again i bring up the fact that the last mars probe sent failed due to difference in systems of measurement, it is best to use a common set of rules, be those rules language, mathematics, the metric system, etc.

there is a lot more interconnection in the scientific community than you may think. wars and difference of national opinions count for very little in this community. during world war ii there was still scientific progress being made and that progress was still disseminated to other nations. the japanese and americans were still cooperating in fields such as mathematics. i'll end the rant there since it is getting off topic.

 

one aluminum bar, two aluminati bars... Now it all makes perfectly sense

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Well, umm, if a number of countries argee on something as a standard, i would call it an international standard by definition. Whether or not it is an influencial one, is something completely else.

 

Well as long as Titanium is call titanium I'm happy.

 

aluminium. that's the english way atleast. american english...which is'borrowed' from proper english may say aluminum, but i prefer aluminium. btw.... i also write spell color as colour and honor as honour.

 

Phurious phosphorous!

 

Does it really matter? Aluminium, aluminum, laboratory, labratory. Biscuit, cookie, pavement, sidewalk, crisps, chips. Once we know who we're talking to, we know what is meant.

Cheers,

Ron.

 

Touchy, touchy! If I'm a European, in the sense that I live on the continent of Europe, then you're an American, because you live on the continent of America. If you're a Canadian, then I'm a Scot.

 

It's aluminium, how do I know?, because that's how the British say it, so obviously it's correct!!

 

From word-detective.com

 

yah
trash the science forums

 

Inconsistency of aluminum vs. aluminium

Throughout most of my scientific career I have been illogically irritated by the difference between the 'wrong' American --um and the 'correct' English --ium. When I eventually got around to checking which was 'correct' I discovered that the original name, coined by the discoverer, was aluminum and it was altered to aluminium by literary folks who thought they 'knew' better.
In my book, the word with priority is aluminum and this should be the spelling by which we know the element. However, only a few of my colleagues are aware of this priority and I suspect I would have an uphill task converting Europe to aluminum. Since we all(?) know of the peculiarity perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps there should be rules of priority (like in zoological and botanical taxonomy) but since the aluminum/ium situation is unique I guess it doesn't matter. Or is it not unique? Maybe one has to be a geriatric retiree to get upset anymore!
John Stanley

 

Did you read the post two above yours?
In the case of "aluminum" (as I will spell it because this is, after all, my column), we can pin the whole mess on Sir Humphry Davy, the English chemist who discovered the stuff back in 1807. Indulging in the perversity of which historical figures seem fond, Davy named his discovery not "aluminum," nor even "aluminium," but "alumium," basing the term on the Latin "alumen," meaning "alum," a substance drawn from the same mineral that had been used since ancient times for dyeing hides and the like. This is all a bit confusing, but we can take comfort in the fact that Davy was apparently a bit befuddled too. Around 1812 he decided that the proper name of his discovery was not "alumium," but actually "aluminum." Almost immediately Davy was besieged by other scientists who pointed out that if Davy would just add an "i" to make the term "aluminium," it would fall into line with such other substance names as "sodium" and "calcium" and, in their words, "sound more classical." So Davy named it yet again, this time to "aluminium," and the "ium" form became standard in both the U.S. and Great Britain.

 

This adds to the explanation as to why it's different on this side of the pond:

The spelling in –um continued in occasional use in Britain for a while, though that in –ium soon predominated. In the USA, the position was more complicated. Noah Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 has only aluminum, though the standard spelling among US chemists throughout most of the nineteenth century was aluminium; it was the preferred version in The Century Dictionary of 1889 and is the only spelling given in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913. Searches in an archive of American newspapers show a most interesting shift. Up to the 1890s, both spellings appear in rough parity, though with the –ium version slightly the more common, but after about 1895 that reverses quite substantially, with the decade starting in 1900 having the –um spelling about twice as common as the alternative; in the following decade the –ium spelling crashes to a few hundred compared to half a million examples of –um.

Actually, neither version was often encountered early on: up to about 1855 it had only ever been made in pinhead quantities because it was so hard to extract from its ores; a new French process that involved liquid sodium improved on that to the extent that Emperor Napoleon III had some aluminium cutlery made for state banquets, but it still cost much more than gold. When the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus in London was cast from aluminium in 1893 it was still an exotic and expensive choice. This changed only when a way of extracting the metal using cheap hydroelectricity was developed.

It’s clear that the shift in the USA from –ium to –um took place progressively over a period starting in about 1895, when the metal began to be widely available and the word started to be needed in popular writing. It is easy to imagine journalists turning for confirmation to Webster’s Dictionary, still the most influential work at that time, and adopting its spelling. The official change in the US to the –um spelling happened quite late: the American Chemical Society only adopted it in 1925, though this was clearly in response to the popular shift that had already taken place.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

 

I say it the way it is written at the time that I'm reading about it.

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