What is the satus of the names for elements 104 to 109? I recall that a few years ago, the “official” names were in dispute (perhaps due to ‘Cold War’ politics). Are the following names now “officially” accepted?
104 - Rutherfordium
105 - Dubnium
106 - Seaborgium
107 - Bohrium
108 - Hassium
109 - Meitnerium
This was the most up to date one I could find. It lists them as you did.
Official? My search didn’t pull up much about how they were named, unless one of those super wordy pages had it buried inside a bunch of posturing crap. Why can’t someone just write a paper without having to try to out do their peers with word usage?
Sorry about the hijack
by up to date, it said it was last updated 3 April, 2002.
This recentIUPAC periodic table contains with the names you supplied.
Here’s the latest on how new elements are named.
I’ll admit, I miss the naming convention that generated names based off of the Atomic number. There was just something cool sounding about an element named Unnilhexium.
Don’t worry, those atomic-number-based names are still around, but only for use when describing elements of 110 and above, eg the recently synthesised Element 114, or ununquadium. The idea is that some of these elements may be given official names later, but until that point (and for purely hypothetical elements) you can use the “number names”. (Some of the elements about Z=115-120 may be quite stable; the so-called island of stability.)
BTW, for those that don’t know, the names are constructed using the following fragments:
0 = nil (n)
1 = un (u)
2 = bi (b)
3 = tri (t)
4 = quad (q)
5 = pent (p)
6 = hex (h)
7 = sept (s)
8 = oct (o)
9 = enn (e)
eg, element 222 would be called bibibium 
Incidentally, here is the IUPAC press release (from August 1997) confirming the acceptance of the new names. So they’ve been official for over 5 years now.
The fun thing is, if Boron didn’t have an offical name, under the number to name system, It’d be Pentium.
Thanks to all, and in particular to r-k for this. It is exactly what I was looking for.
Incidentally, I guess I’ll have to change the answer to some of my ‘element trivia questions’: What elements are named after people? What elements are named after places? (see if you can get them without cheating)
My favorite elemental trivia question is: What element is named after a woman?
The answer, of course, is Meitnerium. I also accept Curium, but that’s technically named after two people, one of whom is a woman. So Meitnerium is the best answer.
I can’t imagine why some people waste their time with this kind of thing. 
Hmm… I can just see people like you making a pilgrimage to Ytterby in Sweden, the undisputed king of elemental eponymy with four (count 'em!) - erbium, terbium, yttrium and ytterbium
[…must… …resist… …posting… …Oh, what the hell!..]
It is the better answer.
Another bit of trivia is that the rules were “bent” to allow an element to be named after a living person (Glenn Seaborg) - although only for 18 months or so, as he died in February 1999.
(And also, apparently chemistry Nobel Prize winners do go to visit the Ytterby mines, as they’re only a short distance from Stockholm, where the prizes are awarded…)
Damn. And they made Elvis wait at least a decade after his reported death before they let him on a postage stamp. It’s just not fair. 