Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "The weird ways the elements got their names" video.

  1. While that um/ium in English (and other modern languages) does just mean 'element', my understanding is that it comes from the number of elements whose original common name was '(metal/stone/substance) from (place)', where (place) was the town or city that was the most well known source of the substance at the time. This was then rendered in Latin (that being the 'common tongue' of the scientific community), if it wasn't Latin already, resulting in a rather massive portion of the elements on the periodic table having that ending, and thus it being used by analogy for most newly discovered elements, even when they Weren't named for places.
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  2. It comes from a wall or the like being 'plumb', or matching the plumb line (that is, the string that is held straight by the lead weight of the plumb bob), and thus being correctly vertical (you can probably imagine the potential issues with awall Not being truely vertical when it is supposed to be.)
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