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 language uses the characters as the predominant way of naming elements. On the other hand, the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese primarily employ native alphabets for the names of the elements (Katakana, Hangul and Quốc Ngữ, respectively).

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).

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 long-established group of "Five Metals" (五金) — gold (金), silver (銀), copper (銅), iron (鐵), and tin (錫) — as well as lead (鉛) and mercury (汞).

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