Étymologie et forme actuelle des noms français des éléments chimiques et de leurs symboles
Etymology of names and forms of chemical elements and their symbols

Summary/Abstract: The etymology is one of the oldest branches of linguistics, semantics is a more modern” – said Stephen Ulmann. These two areas of language coexist and help understand the origin of words and the link between signifier and signified. In this paper we analyze the etymology and the semantic motivation for the chemical elements. We examine the trend was to appropriate a name of a concrete meaning to a substance in the time before and after the revolution of technology, if the meaning refers to a physical or chemical property of the item or returns to its discoverer, his place of origin or discovery or if the name was motivated differently. We are considering whether the Latin language was dominant as a source of lexemes for the creation of the classification of materials or whether it was Greek. The etymological study of the materials is important in terms of chemistry because as knowledge of the elements is necessary to understand the process and the formation of chemical compounds, analysis of the names of chemical elements and then the trivial names of compounds helped their systematic nomenclature.

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