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Francium, element 87, was discovered by French physicist Marguerite Perey in 1939. In 1946 she named the element after her native land. That same year the name of the element made its first appearance in English, in the December issue of the Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Institute of Chemistry:

For element 87, [...] the name Francium (Fr) has been suggested.¹

There were several false claims of discovery prior to Perey’s. One of these, by a team at the Alabama Polytechnical Institute, now Auburn University, dubbed what they thought was element 85 virginium, after the home state of the team’s lead, Fred Allison.² (See also astatine.)

¹Oxford English Dictionary, francium, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 13 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50089429.

²Oxford English Dictionary, virginium, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 13 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50278010. 

Radon, element 86, was discovered in 1900 by German physicist Friedrich Ernst Dorn. The previous year the Curies had discovered that radium gave off a radioactive gas, and it was Dorn that identified this gas as an elemental decay product of radium. The name radon is originally German, from rad- for radium and -on, indicating that it is a noble gas, like argon or neon. The name was in English use by 1918. From the Journal of the Chemical Society of that year:

Radium emanation is given the name Radon, Ro, which at once indicates its origin and its relationship to the argon group.¹

Note that Ro is no longer used as the chemical symbol for the element. The current symbol for Radon is Rn.

Former names for the element include niton, from the Latin nitere, to shine, and emanation or radium-emanation. These names were in use into the middle of the 20th century and are occasionally found when perusing older chemical literature.

¹Oxford English Dictionary, radon, 3rd Edition, June 2008, Oxford University Press, accessed 12 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50196252. 

Astatine, element 85, was first produced in 1940 by Dale Corson, Kenneth MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè in the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Several years later, it was discovered in nature. It is named for its short half-life, as explained by Carson in the 4 January 1947 issue of Nature:

We propose to call element 85 “astatine” from the Greek αστατος, unstable. Astatine is in fact the only halogen without stable isotopes.

There were several earlier claims for discovery that were later disproven, but the names from those mistaken finds can sometimes be found in older chemical literature. One group at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) dubbed the element alabamine, and a British-Swiss team dubbed it anglo-helvetium.¹

The chemical symbol for astatine is At. (Arsenic is As.)

¹Oxford English Dictionary, astatine, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 11 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50013636.

See polonium

See polonium

See polonium

Polonium, element 84, was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie. The pair named the element after Marie Curie’s native land of Poland;¹ Polonia is a post-classical Latin name for that country.

Bismuth is originally the German name for element 83. The name was originally wismuth or wismut, which is the current form in modern German. The “B” form makes its appearance in the works of 16th century mineralogist Georgius Agricola, who latinized the name as bisemutem. The word makes its English appearance in John Wilkins’s 1668 An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language:

Imperfect kinds of Metal [...] used for Making of Pewter, being of shining brittle substance: Bismute, Tin-glass.¹

The chemical symbol for bismuth is Bi.

¹Oxford English Dictionary, bismuth, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 9 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50022666. 

Lead, element 82, has been known since antiquity, and its name dates back to Old English. It is found in the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written c.900 (Bede, an 8th century Northumbrian monk, wrote in Latin. The English translation is a bit later.):

Swylce hit [ref: þis land] is eac berende on wecga orum ares & isernes, leades & seolfres.
(So it [ref: this land] is also bearing within it metal ores of copper & iron, lead & silver.¹

The chemical symbol for lead is Pb, from the Latin name for the metal, plumbum.

¹Oxford English Dictionary, lead, n.¹, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 8 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50130886.

Thallium, element 81, was independently discovered in 1861 by British chemist William Crookes and French chemist Claude-Auguste Lamy. Crookes explains the name he bestowed on the element in the 16 March 1861 issue of The Chemical News:

I have thought [...] to propose for it the provisional name of Thallium, from the Greek θαλλός, or Latin thallus, a budding twig [...] which I have chosen as the green line which it communicates to the spectrum recals [sic] with peculiar vividness the fresh colour of vegetation at the present time.¹

The chemical symbol for thallium is Tl.

¹Oxford English Dictionary, thallium, 2nd Edition, 1989, Oxford University Press, accessed 7 November 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50250248.