silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with atomic number 14 and the symbol Si. It is a hard, brittle, crystalline metalloid with a blue-gray luster. It is the eighth most common element in the earth’s crust and has a wide variety of uses, perhaps the most common being in glass, ceramics, cement, and as a semiconductor in the electronics industry. It is also the basis for the synthetic polymers known as silicones.

While silicon crystals and their role as a component of glass and ceramics were known to the ancients, it wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that it was recognized as a distinct chemical element. It acquired a number of names in various languages, including le silex (1777), terra silicea (1779) and silica (1787). These all have as their root the Latin silex, meaning flint, which is a form of silicon dioxide. In 1808, Humphry Davy dubbed it silicium, although he was unable to isolate the element and determine its chemical properties.

In 1817, Thomas Thomson recognized that the element had properties like that of boron and carbon and named it silicon:

The base of silica has been usually considered as a metal, and called silicium. But as there is not the smallest evidence for its metallic nature, and as it bears a close resemblance to boron and carbon, it is better to class it along with these bodies, and to give it the name of silicon.

But the name silicium persisted through much of the nineteenth century before silicon became the universally accepted name.

Sources:

Davy, Humphry. “Electro-Chemical Researches, on the Decomposition of the Earths” (30 June 1808).  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 98. London: W. Bulmer, 1808, 333–70 at 353. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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, second edition, 1989, silicon, n., silica, n., silicium, n., silex, n., silicone, n.

Thomson, Thomas. A System of Chemistry, fifth edition, vol. 1 of 4. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817, 252. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Austin McKinley, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.