Wait, but an argument from original intent on aluminum/aluminium would go towards using aluminum [0]. That was the original published name, and the change to "

Wait, but an argument from original intent on aluminum/aluminium would go towards using aluminum [0]. That was the original published name, and the change to "-ium" only happened shortly after. We could go even further on that route and argue that the entire pattern of ending metals in "-ium" rather than "-um" is a neologism based on a misunderstanding. Of the classical metals [1] such as gold (aurum), silver (argentum), lead (plumbum), none of them end in "-ium". So where does that come from? The best explanation I've heard is that it comes from the timeline of when different metals were discovered [2], back in the 1700s. Magnesium was discovered, and was named after Magnesia, a region in Greece. Basically, "magnesi-" + "-um". Then Barium was discovered, and was named from the Greek "baryta", meaning "heavy". Molybdenum followed the "-um" trend, and "tungsten"/"wolfram" ignored the discussion altogether. And now we get to the first mistake. Tellurium was named from the Greek "tellus", and should have been called "tellurum". Instead, by analogy from magnesium and barium, the suffix "-ium" was added instead. Strontium came next, after the town of Strontian. This reinforced the trend of the "-ium" suffix, even though it came from "stronti-" + "-um". By the time Zirconium was discovered from the mineral "zircon", the association was cemented. So many metals had ended with "-ium" by sheer coincidence, that people assumed that that was the correct Latin suffix. Bringing it back to the "aluminum" vs "aluminium", this means that there's neither authorial intent nor historical consistency in the use of "aluminium". I'm fine if people think it sounds better, and argue from that, but for the love of all that is holy, people need to quit pretended that it has any more validity or correctness to it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Coinage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Coinage [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metals_of_antiquity [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_element_d...