The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is the body that standardises these symbols, along with names and symbols for new elements. I guess the same goes for former European colonies too.ġ) Countries like Russia (Cyrillic) and Japan (Kanji), which have made significant contributions to the modern Periodic Table? Since they did contribute quite a bit to the Table, they probably "feel" they have the right to use their own customized Periodic Table using Cyrillic or Kanji characters.Ģ) Countries that vehemently oppose cooperation with Western countries, and would obviously dismiss the Latin Alphabet Periodic Table as an 'instrument of the West'. How do countries that don't use the Latin Alphabet deal with this?Īlright, it seems credible to believe that Middle-Eastern countries (Arabic) and African countries would use the standard, Latin Alphabet Periodic Table that we use, without complaint.
Well, this appears to be the same logic behind the use of Latin in biological nomenclature too. Obviously, using a "dead-language" to assign chemical symbols helps eliminate resentment that could rise by favoring one language (say, German) over another (say, English). Now this appears to be a rather clever compromise reached by the English-speaking countries (the U.S.A, the U.K, Australia, etc) and countries that don't really use English, but use the Latin Alphabet (Germany, France, Spain, etc, etc). However, I see a hitch when it comes to a total world-wide acceptance of such a standard.Įvery Periodic Table of the Elements that I've seen in print uses the Latin Alphabet, and quite a few chemical symbols are assigned based on the Latin words for the elements ( Fe- Ferrum, Sn- Stannum, Au- Aurum, Cu- Cuprum, etc etc).
The Periodic Table of the Elements, as I know it, is supposed to be a common standard adopted by the global scientific community. The question does sound pretty absurd, but hear me out first.
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