I suspect it's a pun on the mineral name ... (Incorrectly, I assumed that the name related to 'vital' - as in 'living' - but apparently not : "It was named by

I suspect it's a pun on the mineral name ... (Incorrectly, I assumed that the name related to 'vital' - as in 'living' - but apparently not : "It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1817, the year of his death, after either John Henry Vivian (1785–1855), a Welsh-Cornish politician, mine owner and mineralogist living in Truro, Cornwall, England, or after Jeffrey G. Vivian, an English mineralogist."