scandium / Scandinavia

Scandium is a chemical element with atomic number 21 and the symbol Sc. It is a silvery-white, rare-earth metal. It’s major application is in aluminum alloys for aircraft and sporting equipment. It is also used in some metal halide lamps, and the Scandium-46 radioisotope is used as a tracing element in nuclear medicine.

Swedish chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson discovered the element in euxenite and gadolinite ores in 1879, naming it for his native Scandinavia:

För det nya grundämne, som sålunda blifvit karakteriseradt, föreslår jag benämningen Scandium med hänsyn till dess förekomst i gadolinit eller euxenit, mineral, som hittills endast blifvit funna å skandinaviska halfön.

For the new element thus characterized, I propose the name Scandium, in view of its occurrence in gadolinite or euxenite, minerals which have so far only been found on the Scandinavian peninsula.

Scandinavia comes from the Latin name for the region. That word enters into English usage in the late eighteenth century, although the adjective Scandian appears in English use a century earlier. The origin of the Latin name is uncertain. Skåne, anglicized as Scania, is the name of a province in Sweden, but whether that is from a Proto-Germanic root or borrowed from the Latin is unknown. It is generally agreed that the -avia in Scandinavia comes from the Proto-Germanic *aujo-, meaning wetland or island. The first element in the name may come from the Proto-Germanic *skaþjan, meaning to harm (hence the English to scathe). So Scandinavia might have originally signified “dangerous island,” but this is by no means certain.

Sources:

Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic Online, Guus Kroonen, ed., 2009, s.v. aujo-, skaþjan-. Brill: Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries Online (Consolidated database).

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

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Nilson, L. F. “Om Scandium, en ny jordemetall.” Öfversigt af Kongl. vetenskaps-akademiens förhandlingar, 36.3, 1879, 47–51 at 49–50. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. scandium, n., Scandian, adj., Scandinavian, adj. & n.

Image credit: Johann Homann, before 1715. Wikipedia. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.