For those lucky enough to become parents, the naming of
offspring – though seemingly a joy and privilege - must be one of the hardest,
and most pressing, creative choices they have to make. The infant so far has
few personality characteristics of its own, no reputation for good or ill, is
completely unfamiliar to everyone - but whatever it gets called has to last for
a very long time, and must be right ! So far, the puling neonate doesn’t look
or act like a Darren or a Kevin, a Piers or a Rupert, an Amanda or a Tracey,
but in time it might do. Naming has unexpected implications and consequences. The
existing names of relatives, currently popular first names, the names of
infamous characters in public life, and a need to avoid unfortunate phonetic clashes
or conjunctions of initials will help in determining choice, but otherwise the new
parents are out there on their own: it’s a huge responsibility. Back in my day,
males of my acquaintance were reliably named Richard, Michael, David or
Christopher, with John as a default middle name, while females could expect
Margaret or Elizabeth, Gillian or Christine or Susan, with a middle Anne. It’s
harder now. Back then there was no temptation to name the newborn Mango
Chutney, Headcase, EasyJet, or even Accrington Stanley. It was that kind of
era, Middle England in mid-twentieth century. Unimaginative but safe.
Part of the problem with new names is that whatever is named
probably doesn’t “look like anything” yet. Certainly it doesn’t look like what
it’s “supposed” to look like. Winston
Churchill claimed that all babies looked like him, yet relatively few were
named after him, and then not for reasons of facial or gluteal morphology. The
problem of naming is maybe even more difficult with objects or places. What
shall we call this, er, thingummy, this whatsit? Velcro? A Segway ? You must be
joking. Newly discovered or conquered lands, lacking obvious features, may soon
acquire settlements called New Amsterdam or Boston after old world departure
points suddenly nostalged over, yet have little in common with them. Even in
existing communities a degree of
self-conscious crudity starts to creep in once expansion happens and labels are
required: Kingsbury begets Queensbury, while Surbiton and Norbiton can mock
each other despite their claimed ancient roots. Head to other worlds entirely,
and naming asteroids after the Beatles seems mildly absurd. Once you’ve used up
the Sea of Tranquillity and the Lunar Alps you’ll soon be running out of the
best ideas. Having the Brecon Beacons on Mars or Salisbury Plain on Uranus
isn’t entirely plausible. Mind you, I’m old enough to remember a time when the
name Ringo was itself newsworthy.
In the end, it’s what you’re used to, and when it’s
completely new, you aren’t used to it, and so it sounds daft or inappropriate.
I’ve been reading Kit Chapman’s “Superheavy” (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2019), which
describes how the elements at the heavy end of the periodic table came (in most
cases transiently) into existence. These include the actinoids (or transuranic)
elements, and the superheavies (or transfermium elements) that currently extend
to element 118, oganesson. Considerable sections of this most enjoyable book –
it’s, er, quite light reading - are devoted to discussions about naming,
ultimately decided by the chemical officiating body IUPAC, but reflecting the locations
of the experimental work (for a long time primarily in the US and the Soviet
Union, and then Germany too, and increasingly elsewhere), claims and
counter-claims about what was actually produced (many of these substances have
been manufactured only in the tiniest of quantities, and with ultra-brief half-lives),
as well as assumptions such as that they should not be named after living
persons (seaborgium, element 106, named after prolific discoverer Glenn T.
Seaborg, broke this rule).
Familiarity breeds not only contempt, but also acceptance.
Through long familiarity we have no problem in recognising that, from the
closing days of WW2, uranium was followed by neptunium and then plutonium (a
slightly naff planetary analogy), while americium and californium were
euphonious and obvious acknowledgements of their place of origin, the rather
clumsier berkelium likewise. Curium, einsteinium and nobelium were named after
scientists everyone had heard of. Fermium and mendelevium were less digestible
to the man in the street, though every bit as valid to the historian of science.
Some quite odd elemental names crop up in everyday news and
conversation – molybdenum, manganese, zirconium, barium, selenium, for instance
– without causing too much excitement, but one suspects – or hopes - that when people
begin to study chemistry properly they sit up and take notice of truly
linguistic oddities such as krypton and xenon, dysprosium and ytterbium,
protactinium and praseodymium. There will be a blur between the commonplace and
the truly strange, but exposure has the effect of normalising what was once
peculiar and difficult. As with any other news story, we soon learn to
assimilate the initially exotic. What could be more natural and sensible than
to have a British prime minister called Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson ? A
man, clearly, with a chemistry of his own. But I digress.
I suppose technetium and astatine are always going to sound
slightly fake, francium too, though not germanium. It’s what you know. But it’s
only when one encounters the newish superheavies that an overwhelming sense of
peculiarity strikes, especially, as in my case, if one has taken one’s eye off
the ball for a decade or three. Oganesson, already mentioned, in the same group
as the rare or inert gases (hence the –on ending), named after Yuri Oganessian,
of Armenian descent, and tennessine, element 117, named after the state of Tennessee
and with the “-ine” ending characteristic of the halogens (bromine, chlorine
etc), don’t sound quite right. Not yet. Nor do the awkward-of-pronunciation
darmstadtium (110) and roentgenium (111). Livermorium, element 116, symbol Lv,
and named for Livermore near San Francisco, sounds improbable and rather
unpleasant, while moscovium (for Moscow, 115) and nihonium (for Japan, 113)
sound a tad too slick. But give us time and they’ll roll off the tongue as
readily as neon or neodymium.
If the fabled “island of stability” is reached, with
superheavy elements that are long-lasting, able to be produced in significant
quantities, and useful in the real world, then the initially profoundly odd may
become part of daily life and common language. “Superheavy” suggests that eventually
a total of more than 170 elements may be possible, or even that there is no
upper limit, in which case we are in for plenty of novelties, with novelty
names to get used to.
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