Wordnerdery

🙙 Home 🙚

Which country has the most periodic table elements named after it or its cities?

Sweden seems to be the answer to this question. It has:

  1. Yttrium,
  2. Ytterbium,
  3. Terbium,
  4. Erbium,
    5. all named after the town of Ytterby, where they were discovered,
  5. Holmium (after Stockholm),
    6. and possibly
  6. Scandium (after Scandinavia), and
  7. Thulium (after Thule).

The United States is in second place with:

  1. Americium,
  2. Californium,
  3. Berkelium,
  4. Livermorium (after the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA), and
  5. Tennessine.

The full list of element etymologies can be found at wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_element_name_etymologies