A project that a friend of mine is working on – and the appearance of unnildecium as a poster – prompts me to wonder: What’s the consensus of the names of element 104 and beyond?
I had heard that a decision was made to go with the standardized numeric naming system to avoid sniping over who discovered which element first and what the names should be and such. I know that two different camps wanted to use kurchatovium and rutherfordium to name the same element, and I know that seaborgium was proposed as a name but taken back because Mr. Seaborg is (or was, at the time) alive.
But these non-numeric names seem to be pretty official in an unofficial kind of way, you know?
Interesting. It appears that they decided on letting seaborgium stand as a name. And rutherfordium won out over kurchatovium. I wonder if they’ll use kurchatovium for a later element – it is catchy!
Just to make sure it’s clear, 101-109 are now (I believe) official, 110 is still unofficial (unless it’s been accepted since that page/since I checked), and 111-118 don’t have official names yet (I don’t believe anyone plans to keep the unununium-style names forever, they’re just the official names until official names are agreed upon).
Someone please correct me if the nil/un/bi/etc names are being used permanently now.
If I’m not mistaken, the unnilwhateverium names are “official temporary names” – as an element is claimed to have been discovered in the cascade of particles from a given reaction, it is designated by the un/nil system. When a given claim is finally agreed on by the atomic-physics community as having the priority for that particular element, the right to nominate a permanent name goes to the claimant – subject to a few rules on what is and is not an appropriate name.