Which is more Latin, considering roots and terminology:
aluminum
aluminium
?
Salve, Luce. “Aluminum” is more faithful to classical Latin roots but is that the most important thing? Precedent dictates here, surely, and in this case it’s a moot one. I see the debate described in Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium with “aluminium” being recommended in the early-19th century just for the modernity of the word rather than in preference to faithfulness to classical latin roots with “aluminum”. Seems a good enough reason, but it’s all down to taste and fashion in the end, or whatever neo-Latin dictionary you like best.
I see “Aluminium” is the Latin spelling in Vicipaedia and there are other precedents of new elements ending in “-ium” and given Latin names, e.g., “Silicium”. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry currently uses Aluminium (though it alternated in the past) and this seems the cue for the Latinized words.
But not for “platinum, aurum, argentum,” etc. The Latin root does matter to me. Based on that, what is logical?
Actually, I think, and I could be wrong, lest ~D decides to rear his head again, that the -ium ending on Aluminium is the Latinized form of the Greek diminutives ending in -ion. I suppose it wouldn’t apply here totally, would it? I haven’t looked into the question all that much.
In any case, I’d have to agree with adrianus that we’re speaking English, not Latin, when we describe the elements. It doesn’t work like you’re wanting it to work - that’s anachronistic.
“Aluminum” may be more logical in a revisionist way, Luce, but “aluminium”, like “silicium” or “magnesium”, has every reason to be adopted as a neo-Latin word. Just a matter of convention and convenience betraying modern roots in words coined from other languages. 
I still for the life of me can’t convince people that it was supposed to be pronounced Beijing duck.
No, it’s not English that we’re speaking here any more than it is English when we refer to a black walnut as Juglans nigra or to a cat as Felis silvestris catus. I accept these as borrowings into English, but from a common Graecolatin language base. The same is true for chemistry. The universality of these conjoined Latin and Greek tongues in the formation of scientific vocabulary is essential because the whole world does not speak English, and other languages form their scientific words based upon the original terms as formed in modern (or ancient) Latin and Greek.
Therefore, “aluminum/aluminium” needs no analogy with any other element — be it magnesium or platinum — it must stand on its own as philologically valid.
You know I’m just discussing for the sake of it, Luce, but what was behind your original question? Personally, I think philological validity may be acquired through practice and the study of that practice to evolve yardsticks to be applied analogically to other cases, and practice itself can be guided and strengthened by appeal to analogous types, which seems to have been the case in this modern instance, to some extent.
Salvete, Luce Christophoreque. Standardising on naming the chemical elements and attributing chemical symbols is a periodic table “20th-century thing” with an international dimension. The body responsible was and is IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists). They recommend “aluminium” but “aluminum” is an acceptable alternative (chemical symbol Al, of course). It was always the case that the discoverer of something had the conventional “right” to name it, but national bodies have influence, of course, in how that element is named in their own language. Names that translate most easily are advantageous in ensuring adoption and that was why chosing Latin names was a good thing in European and North American contexts.
In the nineteenth century, then, before IUPAC, the names alumium, alumininium and aluminum were used and, despite being used in languages other than Latin, it was intended also that these were valid Latin words (albeit newly coined). Aluminum is truer to its root in the Latin word alumen -inis but alumium and aluminium were used by analogy with other metals and incidentally maybe because, by one writer in England at least, aluminium had a “more classical sound” (dubious, perhaps). In the 20th century, IUPAC went back and forwards in its sanction of the LATIN names aluminum and aluminium but settled on aluminium to accord with the convention of giving newly discovered metallic elements an “-ium” termination (as a Latin word to serve all languages of its members). It defines aluminum as an acceptable alternative, understandably because of its North American usage. Some new metals were given Latin “-um” endings by their discoverers, because of care to Latin and Greek root words chosen in naming them (platinum, molybdenum, tantalum, lanthanum) and in these cases, when it came to standardizing internationally on names, the relevant committess accepted established practice between its member languages and left them as they were, rather than change to the more standard “-ium” ending (and you’re talking about lots of new metallic elements in the 20th century, of course, – all given Latin “-ium” endings to say “I’m a metal”).
Silicon is interesting because, when it was first discovered, it was thought to be a metal and named silicium. You might prefer it to have been called “silicum”, Luce, as truer to its Latin root in silex -icis. Nevertheless, it was given the Latin name silicium in conformity with most newly discovered metals. When it was then found not to be a metal, the name was changed to silicon. So Vicipaedia is not exactly wrong in calling it silicium in Latin, but it should note that the Latin name has been changed (the neo-Latin word silicium sends out the wrong message).
Not only did you have so many new elements being given the ending “-ium” but you had loads of erroneous discoveries so named (with “-ium” endings), later found not to have been new metallic elements at all and dropped by IUPAC committees. Anyway, from all this you might say that it is perfectly acceptable to use either “aluminum” or “aluminium” in Latin, for different, but perfectly valid, philological reasons (neither “better” than the other).
This is not to mention that even Latin itself had philologically questionable words in it stemming from confusion of that word’s origins.
Care Adriane, I appreciate the effort you have gone to, but you have said much of this already, all of which I have already known from Wiki and other sources.
Aluminum is truer to its root in the Latin word alumen -inis
This is what I am trying to get to. Why is an “-um” ending more Latin than “-ium” on the end of a third declension root? For example, III adjectives from participles are i-stems, so we have intelligentium, of the intelligent ones. This forms the basis of a crude neuter singular, which is pluralized into intelligentia, and from there made feminine singular and into a noun.
This is the kind of explanation I am looking for in the justification of “aluminum” — so far I have found no precedent, but I feel sure that there might be one.
Lucus Eques, I think you’ve answered your own question. The little I’ve read on the history indicates to me that “aluminum” came first. Then more scholarly people decided to correct the Latin of those lowly chemists, for just the reason you outlined, and created the name “aluminium.” On this side of the Atlantic, we couldn’t be bothered changing. Everywhere else, they went back and forth on this for a century and a half, and finally officially decided on “aluminium,” although this has nothing to do with the question of what the correct Latin would be.
They can decide what they want, but the British will never give up al-you-MIN-ium. It’s part of their cultural identity. They’ve picked out a small number of words (oh-ree-GAH-no, JAG-you-are, SHED-yule, etc.) and deliberately pronounce them in a way that violates the rules of their own dialect (not ours) so as to be different from Americans. You can detect a pause before they tackle one of these words, so they can shift mental gears so as to use secondary stress or give a vowel its full value in an unstressed syllable, but these pronunciations set them apart from us colonials, and they’ll never change. Nor, speaking as an Anglophile myself, do I think they should. It just makes me smile a little when these words come up!
Thanks for the thoughts, Arvid.
I didn’t quite answer my own question: is “lumen” a III-declension i-stem?
The other words from “lumen” I can think of are “luminosus,” “luminaris,” which suggest that it is not an i-stem. Still, I’d like a more lexographical analysis of this.
No, lumen is not an i-stem.
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.
Catullus 51 - a translation of Sappho
Neuter i-stems have the plural nom./acc. ending in -ia, not just the gen. ending in -ium.
This much I gathered.
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.Catullus 51 - a translation of Sappho
A lovely poem — why did you cite it?
Neuter i-stems have the plural nom./acc. ending in -ia, not just the gen. ending in -ium.
Heh, of this I am aware.
So — “luminosus” is another word. There is no intrusive ‘i’. Is this the thing that makes “aluminum” justifiable?
I cited it because it was the first poem that came to mind with lumen in plural - lumina. Examples are abound, as are for numen etc. as well.
I fail to understand your last question. Have you read about Caesar’s De Analogia?
Salvete, Luce et Christophore et omnes. While I think it simple and fine, Luce, to say, “well, it’s a consonant stem, so I’m just going to add ‘-um’ to the stem to coin a new neuter word” (which is what I understand people to mean when then say “aluminum” is a word conforming to its consonant stem word “alumen” by not adding an extra “i”), what’s wrong with creating a 20th-century class of metals to be known by the “-ium” suffix, irrespective of the nature of their stem? Aren’t there precedents? Neuter abstracts may be typically contructed using the suffixes -ium and -tium, which may then become concretes. So, in particular, the 3rd decl. consonant-stem noun hospes -itis (= a guest) becomes hospitium (= hospitality) and then comes to mean a concrete noun hospitium (= an inn). I suppose I’m saying that the idea of coining a class can justify throwing in the extra “i”, expecially when there’s no ambiguity created, and more especially if an ambiguity may thus be avoided. We know aluminatus is the adjective “containing alum” and aluminatius is the dealer in alum. The extra “i” carries the distinction irrespective of the root. (Apologies if this is a naive way of looking at things. I don’t know any better.)
Judging from your later post, are you saying “neither aluminum nor aluminium is more latin that the other”? Don’t we all agree with that?