


Element 115 will be called moscovium, or Mc, after Moscow. The remaining elements were discovered-and named-by a team of Russian-U.S. (Four other countries have elements named after them, The Atlantic points out: francium for France, germanium for Germany, polonium for Poland, and americium for the United States.) The chemical symbol for the element will be Nh. Nihonium was discovered in Japan and is named after the Japanese word “Nihon,” or “Land of the Rising Sun.” If ratified, nihonium will become the periodic table’s first East Asian name. Three of the elements’ names are derived from the geographical locations of their research institutes, and the fourth is named after a scientist. According to IUPAC, the proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 are nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson, respectively. If they pass muster, the monikers will be officially placed on the periodic table’s seventh row per final approval by chemistry’s governing body, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).įollowing tradition, the scientists who discovered these elements were granted the honor of coming up with the names and symbols. The designations will now be scrutinized via a 5-month public review. This past January, scientists announced that they'd discovered four new chemical elements-and yesterday, Science News reports, they finally received new names.
