My 8 year old asked me during our homeschool science class one day, why the gasses all seem to end in “gen”. Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen. I pointed out to him those which end differently, such as the nobel gasses, but I didn’t have an answer to his question. Does anyone here know?
Gen = Maker, Forming.
Hydrogen = Waterforming,
Unfortunately I do not recall the meaning of the Oxy- and Nitro- prefixes.
-DF
Oxy- means ‘sharp’, because it was thought all acids contained oxygen. Nitro- comes from nitron, which means ‘native soda’, whatever that means.
sharp, keen, acute, pungent, acid
This goes back to ancient Egypt.
Native soda refers to a naturally occurring sodium substance or salt, a mix of sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride (table salt) usually, or in this case sodium nitrate. The name nitrogen came AFTER nitric acid, and I am led to believe that nitric acid was distilled from sodium nitrate, and nitrogen referred to the discovery by a french chemist that nitrogen was a component of nitric acid.