nobelium

Alfred Nobel, late nineteenth century

19 April 2024

In theory, the naming of new chemical elements should be rather straightforward: the scientists who first discover/synthesize the element suggest a name, which is officially approved by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). But the naming of element 102, nobelium, is twisted and fraught with controversy as three different research groups battled for decades over the right to name the element.

Nobelium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 102 and symbol No. It is, of course, named after Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, gelignite, and ballistite and endower of the research prizes that bear his name. Nobelium has no uses beyond pure research since its most stable isotope has a half-life of less than an hour.

Three different research teams claimed to have been the first to synthesize the element: 1) a team comprising scientists from the Nobel Institute for Physics (Stockholm, Sweden), Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, Illinois), and the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment, (Harwell, UK); 2) a team from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (Berkeley, California); and 3) a team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia).

The Swedish/Argonne/British team was the first to make a claim of synthesizing the element, suggesting the name nobelium, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) quickly recognized the discovery and the name. The first mention of the synthesis and the name is in the 20 July 1957 issue of Science News Letter:

The U.S. and British scientists suggest the name, nobelium, for the heaviest element. The Institute where the work was performed is named in honor of the Swedish chemist, the late Alfred Nobel, who established the Nobel Prizes awarded annually for outstanding contributions in the arts and sciences.

The group officially published their results in a letter in the September 1957 issue of Physical Review:

We suggest the name nobelium, symbol No, for the new element in recognition of Alfred Nobel's support of scientific research and after the institute where the work was done.

The results, however, were not without controversy. The other two groups could not repeat the experiment, and it was subsequently shown the Swedish-led team did not, in fact, synthesize the element. The Berkeley team claimed to have possibly synthesized the element in 1959 and suggested keeping the name nobelium. But again the results of the experiment were uncertain. The Soviet team claimed to have synthesized the element in 1966 and suggested the name joliotum with the symbol Jo, after chemist and physicist Irène Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie.

In 1994, IUPAC revisited the claims and verified the Dubna team was the first to undisputedly synthesize the element, although it also found that the Berkeley team may have done so earlier. IUPAC kept the name nobelium, however, because the name had been in wide use for decades. This decision drew further protest from the Dubna laboratory, and in 1995 IUPAC changed the official name to flerovium. This sparked even further protests from the Swedes, Americans, and British, and in 1997 IUPAC took the unprecedented step of rescinding its rescinding of the name, restoring the name nobelium to element 102. The name flerovium would eventually be assigned to element 114.

So once again, the name of Alfred Nobel, the arms manufacturer turned benefactor to science, the arts, and peace, was mired in controversy.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Fields, P. R., et al. “Production of the New Element 102” (19 July 1957). Physical Review, 107, 1 September 1957, 1460–62 at 1461. American Physical Society: Physical Review Journals Archive.

Hoffman, Darleane C., Diana M. Lee, and Valeria Pershina. “Transactinide Elements and Future Elements” in The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements, fourth edition, vols. 1–6, Lester R. Morss, Norman M. Edelstein, and Jean Fuger, eds. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, 1652–1752 at 1660–61. SpringerLink.

“Make New Element 102.” Science News Letter, 72.3, 20 July 1957, 35. JSTOR.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, s.v. nobelium, n.

Photo credit: Gösta Florman, late nineteenth century. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

pretendian

Sicilian-American Espera Oscar de Corti (a.k.a. “Iron Eyes” Cody) meeting President Jimmy Carter, 21 April 1978

17 April 2024

Pretendian is a word that has yet to make it into any major dictionary, and it refers to a person who falsely claims to be Native-American or to have Native-American ancestry. It’s etymology is rather obvious, a blend of pretend + Indian. Pretendians range from people who have been told incorrectly by their families that they have Indigenous heritage to outright frauds who use false claims for financial or professional benefit, taking what should rightly go to others.

Like most words, this one got its start in oral use. The earliest documented use I can find is from the Usenet newsgroup alt.native on 22 April 2003. A user replied to another poster with the username BravesHeart with this:

No need to be so polite, BravesHeart, what do you *really* think? :-)

Don't you love it when some pretendian gets on the board, insults folks who have been here for years, and tries to tell us how we're *supposed* to think?

The word made its way onto Urbandictionary.com in an entry dated 15 April 2007:

Every white person in America that claims to be “part” Native American.

I'm part Indian on my great grand mother's brother's uncle's sister side (Pretendian) but I don't have any way of proving it.

And it sees its way into print by 4 August 2010 in the newspaper Indian Country Today in an interview with Vicky Apala-Cuevas (Oglala Lakota):

ICT: The imitation Indians claim to be well-meaning.

Apala-Cuevas: As the professor wrote in her letter, we've suffered under centuries of good intentions. People who play Indian are a problem countrywide. I see it as mental illness—a mass hysteria. An elder told me they have genetic memory of the genocide, so they carry fear within them and claim these relationships and this knowledge to alleviate the stress. Wilma Mankiller once sat next to Bill Clinton at a lunch, and the first thing he said to her was that he was part Cherokee. So you see, it's from the president on down.

ICT: Do 'pretendían' activities affect the wider public?

Apala-Cuevas: Absolutely. We heard, for example, about a pond liner purchased to construct a sweat lodge. This is very dangerous, as plastic coverings—as opposed to natural traditional coverings—produce extreme temperatures and toxic fumes and may well have contributed to the recent deaths and hospitalizations at the non-Native pseudo-sweat lodge in Arizona. We contacted Iowa's health department, and they were concerned. We're also exploring consumer-protection laws, as some may receive funding under false pretenses.

Pretendians can be found in many fields. Academics who have furthered their careers though false claims of Native-American heritage include Ward Churchill (University of Colorado, Boulder), Elizabeth Hoover (University of California, Berkeley), and Andrea Smith (University of California, Riverside). Entertainers who have falsely claimed Indigenous ancestry include Johnny Depp, Cher, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Maria Louise Cruz (a.k.a. Sacheen Littlefeather), and Espera Oscar de Corti (a.k.a. “Iron Eyes” Cody). Pretendian writers include Archibald Stansfield Belaney (a.k.a. Grey Owl) and Jackie Marks (a.k.a. Jamake Highwater). Pretendians in politics include Senator Elizabeth Warren and Trump-supporter Kaya Jones. A few (e.g,. Hoover and Warren) have admitted the false claims and apologized, but most pretendians when exposed do not.

There is no single set of qualifications that determine whether one is Native-American or not. It is up to individual tribes and bands to determine who is part of their community. While ancestry is one factor, it is usually not enough. One must also be accepted as part of a tribal community, which may or may not entail being officially registered as a member. Nor is the amount of Indigenous “blood” one has usually a factor. The idea of a “blood quantum” is a settler-colonial one.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Lancaster, Bob. Usenet: alt.native, 22 April 2003.

Urbandictionary.com, 15 April 2007, s.v. pretendian, n. (Accessed 17 March 2024)

Woodard, Stephanie. “Playing Indian.” Indian Country Today (Oneida, New York), 4 August 2010, 6, 8. ProQuest Newspapers.

Photo credit: White House staff photographer, 21 April 1978. Wikimedia Commons. National Archives, NAID: 179013. Public domain photo.

Canada

Portion of a 1643 map showing the name Canada

15 April 2024

The name Canada comes from Huron-Iroquois kanata (kaná:taʔ), meaning town or settlement, entering English through French. The original town in question was the Iroquois village of Stadaconé, the site of the present-day Quebec City.

French-Breton explorer Jacques Cartier reached Stadaconé in July 1534, taking the chief, Donnacona, and several others hostage, later releasing them on the condition that the chief’s two sons return to France with him. Cartier learned the word kanata from these two, and returned to the town, with the two men, the following year. Cartier and his crew wintered in the village, where the inhabitants saved most of them from dying of scurvy. In return, Cartier again seized the Donnacona, the two sons, and seven others and returned to France with them. All of Indigenous hostages died in France. Cartier returned to the site in 1543 to find it had been destroyed by some unknown enemy.

Cartier recorded the name Canada in his 1545 account of his voyages:

Et à la fin desdictes ysles, ya vne fort belle terre basse, plaine de aliant vers ledićt Canada, le trauers dudićt cap chuiron [?] trois licues ya de perfond cent brasses & plus.

(And at the end of the said islands, there is a very beautiful low land, a plain of land leading towards the land of Canada, the path of the land of Cape Chuiron three licues there is a hundred fathoms deep and more.)

The name Canada appears in English in 1568 in a translation of priest and explorer André Thevet’s account of his voyage to South America in 1555. In it, Thevet refers to the French colony to the north:

For bicause that this countrey lying in the Northe was discouered in oure time, first by Sebastian Babat [i.e., Cabot] an Englisheman, and then by Iames Quartier a Briton [i.e., Jacques Cartier, a Breton], beyng well séene in nauigation, who toke vpon him the voyage at the commaundemente of the kyng of France, Francisce the first, I think it good therfore somewhat to write, the which semeth to me most worthie to be noted: although that accordyng to the order of our voyage homewardes, it ought to go before the next Chapter. Moreouer, that which moueth me so to doe, is that I haue not séene any that hathe treated otherwise, although to my iudgement the thyng doth merite it, and that I haue surely learned it of the sayd Iames Quartier. This lande being almoste vnder the Pole artike, is ioyned towarde the Weast to Florida, and to the Ilandes of Perou, and since is coasted by the west toward Baccalles, of which we haue spoken. The which place I think be the same, that those which lately haue discouered and named Canada, as it happeneth many times that some will giue name to that whiche is out of others knowledge, the which toward the east extendeth to the sea called Hyperbores, & on the other side to a mayne lande called Campestra de Berga, to the Southeast ioyning to this countrey.

Cartier’s account was translated into English in 1580 by John Florio, who translated it from an Italian edition of Cartier’s book. The passage uses the name Canada to refer to Stadaconé and references the taking of the Indigenous hostages:

We named the sayde Gulfe Saint Laurence hys Baie. The twelfth of the sayde month we went from the sayd S. Laurence hys Bay, or Gulfe, sayling Westwarde, and came to finde a Cape of maine lande on the Northside of the Baye, that runneth from the saide Sainte Laurence his Baie about fiue and twentie leagues West and by South. And of the two wilde men whiche we toke in our former voyage, it was tolde vs that this was of the Bande towarde the South, and that there was an Ilande, on the Southerlye parte of whiche is the waye to goe to Honguedo where the yeare before we hadde taken them in Canada, and that two dayes iourney from the sayde Cape, an Ilande began the Kingdome of Siguenay, in the lande Northwarde extending towarde Canada.

A glossary at the end of the book includes this entry:

a Towne     canada

Beginning in the 1550s, French maps started using Canada as the name for the region around what would become Quebec City and started calling the St. Lawrence River the grande rivière du Canada. The colony of New France would be conquered by the English in the French and Indian War (Seven Year’s War), 1754–63, and in 1791 the English officially created the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, present-day Ontario and Quebec. The Province of Canada was created in 1841, uniting the two colonies, and in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was created, including at first Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and eventually the other provinces and territories.

That’s how an Indigenous word for town or settlement came become the name of a region and then an entire country.

An alternative and highly dubious origin that is sometimes claimed is that the name comes from the Portuguese acá nada (nothing here), which was so noted by early Portuguese explorers sailing the St. Lawrence River. Other than the vague similarity in sound and form, no evidence for this claim exists.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Cartier, Jacques. Brief Recit & Succincte Naration de la Nauigation Faicte es Ysles de Canada, Hochelage & Saguenay & Autres. Paris: P. Roffet & A. Le Clerc, 1545, 8–9. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

———. A Shorte and Briefe Narration of the Two Nauigations and Discoueries to the Northweast Partes Called New Fraunce. John Florio, trans. London: H. Bynneman, 1580, 31, 80. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2017, s.v. Canada, n.1.

Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.

Thevet, André. The New Found Worlde. Thomas Hacket, trans. London: Henrie Bynneman, 1568, 122–23. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Jean Boisseau, 1643, “Description de la Nouvelle France.” Library of Congress. Public domain image.

nitrogen

Liquid nitrogen

12 April 2024

Nitrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 7 and the symbol N. It is the most common element in the earth’s atmosphere. The English name is borrowed from French, which formed it as a combination of nitre and ‑gène. The latter lexeme is from the Greek -γενής (-genes), meaning that which produces. Nitre, however, came to French from the Latin nitrum, which Latin acquired from the Greek νίτρον (nitron), which in turn comes from a Semitic root, possibly the Egyptian ntrj, that signified the divine or sacred. Sodium carbonate, or natron, is a drying agent that was used in mummification. So nitrogen is literally that which produces nitric acid.

The first to recognize nitrogen as a distinct gas was Daniel Rutherford in 1772. He called it mephitic air (noxious air):

Per Aërem Mephiticum, quem alii vocant Fixum, intelligo, cum Cl. Prof. Black, singularem istam aëis speciem, quae animalibus lethum infert, quae ignem aut flammam extinguit, et quae a calce viva ac salibus alkalinis avidissime attrahitur.

(By the [term] Mephitic Air, which others call Fixed, I understand, along with Prof. Black, that particular species of air which brings disaster to animals, which extinguishes fire or flame, and which is most eagerly attracted by quicklime and alkaline salts.)

Of course nitrogen is not toxic, and flames are extinguished and animals die not from the nitrogen, but from the lack of oxygen in pure nitrogen environments.

Besides mephitic air, another early name for nitrogen was azote. That term was coined by Louis-Bernard Guyton, Baron de Morveau in 1787:

Dans ces circonstances nous n’avons pas cru pouvoir mieux faire que de nous arrêter à cette autre propriété de l'air phlogistiqué, qu’il manifeste si sensiblement, de ne pas entretenir la vie des animaux, d’être réellement non-vital, de l’être, en un mot, dans un sens plus vrai que les gaz acides & hépatiques qui ne font pas comme lui partie essentielle de la masse atmosphérique, & nous l’avons nommé azote, de l’ɑ privatif des grecs & de ζωή vie. Il ne sera pas difficile après cela d’entendre & de retenir que l’air commun eft un composé de gaz oxigène & de gaz azotique.

(In these circumstances we did not believe we could do better than to focus on this other property of phlogistoned air, which it manifests so noticeably, of not supporting the life of animals, of being truly non-vital, to be, in a word, in a truer sense than the acid and hepatic gases which do not, like it, form an essential part of the atmospheric mass, and we have named it azote, from the privative ɑ of the Greeks and of ζωή life. After that, it will not be difficult to understand and remember that common air is a compound of oxygen gas and azotic gas.)

The name nitrogen, or rather nitrogène in the original French, was coined by Jean-Antoine Chaptal in 1790:

Il me paroît donc, que la dénomination gaz azote n’eft point établie d’après les principes qu’on a adoptés, et que les noms donnés aux diverses substances dont ce gaz forme un des élémens s`éloignent également des principes de la nomenclature. Pour corriger la no menclature sur ce point, il n’est question que de substituer à ce mot une dénomination qui dérive du systême général qu’on a suivi, et je me permettrai de proposer celle de gaz nitrogène: d’abord elle est déduite d’une propriété caractéristique et exclusive de ce gaz qui forme le radical de l’acide nitrique.

(It therefore appears to me that the name azote gas is not established according to the principles that have been adopted, and that the names given to the various substances of which this gas forms one of the elements also move away from the principles of nomenclature. To correct the nomenclature on this point, it is only a question of substituting for this word a name which derives from the general system that we have followed, and I would allow myself to propose that of nitrogen gas: first of all it is deduced of a characteristic and exclusive property of this gas which forms the nitric acid radical.)

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Chaptal, Jean-Antoine. Élémens de Chimie, vol. 1. Montpellier: Jean-François Picot, 1790, lx–lxi. HathiTrust Digital Library.

De Morveau, Louis-Bernard Guyton. “Le Mémoire sur le Développement des Principes de la Nomenclature Méthodique.” In Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude Louis Bertholet, and Antoine-François de Fourcroy. Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique. Paris: Cuchet, 1787, 26–74 at 36. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—From Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry. 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, s.v. nitrogen, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. azote, n.

Rutherford Daniel. Dissertatio inauguralis de aere fixo dicto, aut mephitico. Edinburgh: Balfour and Smellie, 1772, 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: Robin Müller, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

boss

Bruce Springsteen in concert in East Germany, 19 July 1988

10 April 2024

The word boss has many different meanings with many different etymologies, but most of these senses of the word are uncommon or archaic. The dominant meaning of boss is that of a supervisor or person in charge. That sense comes from the Dutch baas, brought into English via the Dutch settlement of New Netherlands along the Hudson River valley in what is now New York. Besides the supervisory meaning, the Dutch word has an older, more familial sense of uncle, which makes the word related to the German Base, meaning cousin, and its Old High German forebear basa, meaning aunt. So the word probably went from meaning respected elder who should be obeyed to that of a supervisor.

The earliest use of boss in English that I know of was recorded in Maximilian Schele de Vere’s 1872 Americanisms, although I have been unable to find the source he quotes. That source is M. Philipse’s 1679 Early Voyage to New Netherlands. The Philipse family was a prominent one in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, but I can’t identify which member of that family this is, nor have I found a copy of the said book. As quoted by Schele de Vere, the passage reads:

Here they had their first interview with the female boss or supercargo of the vessel.

The first verifiable use of the word that I know of is in a 26 May 1806 letter by Washington Irving, who with his stories of the early nineteenth-century New York records many of the first uses of Dutch words borrowed into English. The opening of the letter reads:

I have just received your most welcome lines of the 24th; and being immediately sent out on an errand, I amused myself with reading them along the street; the consequence was, I stumbled twice into the gutter; overset an old market-woman, and plumped head and shoulders into the voluminous bosom of a fat negro wench, who was sweating and smoking in all the rankness of a summer heat. I was stopped two or three times by acquaintances to know what I was laughing so heartily at; and by the time I had finished the letter, I had completely forgotten the errand I was sent on; so I had to return, make an awkward apology to boss, and look like a nincompoop.

Of course, no discussion of boss would be complete with mentioning The Boss, that is the man, himself, Bruce Springsteen. The musician has been known by that moniker since at least 1976. From an article about “Southside” Johnny Lyon in Trenton, New Jersey’s Sunday Times Advertiser of 27 June 1976:

A recent Village Voice article drew some highly negative comparison’s [sic] between Lyon and Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen. The author didn’t much care for their music either.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. boss, n.2.

Irving, Washington. Letter to Gouveneur Kemble, 26 May 1806. In The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. 1, Pierre M. Irving, ed. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1864, 170–71. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. boss, n.6, boss, v.2, bossy, adj.2.

Philipse, M. Early Voyage to New Netherlands (1679). Quoted in Maximilian Schele de Vere. Americanisms. New York: Charles Scribner, 1872, 91. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Sauter, Eric. “Southside Johnny and the Talk of Asbury Park.” Sunday Times Advertiser (Trenton, New Jersey), 27 June 1976, This Week Magazine 8–10 at 10.

Image credit: Thomas Uhlemann, 1988. Wikimedia Commons. Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.