Mr.Webster of dictionary fame decided to only use Aluminum in his publication so that took over.

The bigger player here is probably Charles Martin Hall, who invented* a cheap method of refining it. Turns out yeah, if it's marketed and sold as aluminum in the US that's what people will know it as.

Although I guess it is possible Webster's dictionary influenced Hall's naming choice.

I wouldn't mind if we went back to calling it alumium, though.

* as a sidenote, also invented in France in the same year (coincidence) by Paul Héroult, thus called the Hall-Héroult process

Same Brits tricked us into calling it soccer then changed their minds.

A friend of mine from my TV days was working in South Africa when they hosted the association football World Cup and wound up talking to a woman who worked for the Football Association (the sport’s governing body in England and the reason the sport is called association football). She was angrily insisting to him that Americans invented the name “soccer” and that it never had that name in England. She might have been inebriated, but that was a lot to be confidently incorrect about her own employer.

Aluminum by Davies, who first isolated it and therefore gets to name it. Then 'alumunium' by Wollaston, who didn't and therefore doesn't.

The one that gets me is they bitch about calling the season Fall. They claim that Americans are so basic and stupid that we can only think to name the season after the leaves falling. They think that the name Autumn (which we also use), borrowed from French, is a far better name for the season.

First of all, we get it. You have your nose firmly up the collective asses of the French, Britain. It's a very pretty language, but maybe you could stop butchering their language for 5 minutes if you're going to be criticizing others for their English.

Second, you are the ones who came up with the name "Fall", Brits. Fall is indeed short for "The Fall of the Leaf". That term predates the US entirely, by almost two centuries, at least. And while you may think to judge us for continuing to use such an obvious name, I have bad news. Because you still use its complement, Spring, short for "The Spring of the Leaf". Say what you will about American English, but at least, in this, we're consistent.

I'm going with 'box-ite', and if that's wrong somehow, I'm removing it from the server, rofl.

I never realized that, time to make a mod that renames those instances aluminum!

Proof.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Gfxm2qqghsQ

The discoverer named it aluminum

Mendelevium? Ruthorfordium? Uranium? Plutonium?

This is not true. The initial discoverer, Sir Humphrey Davy, named it alumium and later changed it to aluminum. British chemists changed the name adding the I. Websters dictionary sealed the deal in 1925 by standardizing the name.

Common sense says this is likely an urban myth / made up.

Nice. “I heard” this bullshit so I’m gonna roll up in here and repeat it without verifying it.

Leadium and Goldium.

Magnesum*

Picking 3 letters in the middle of the word is strange to me. I think we should call it "asser"

Just trying to stir the pot a bit. :)

Did you also get that factoid from vsauce back in like 2013?

Edit: https://youtu.be/e5jDspIC4hY factoid starts at about 40 seconds in. The entire video is a good watch, though. My, how our attention has changed since 2013...

They said to try ask that not actually do it!!!

Most Americans aren't actually too biased against metric, I'd say that's a stereotype boosted by an extremely vocal minority. The real problem is that most of us can't visualize the length of a yard or mile any better than we can a meter or kilometer. It's more an across the board lack of education.

IDK if I've heard aluminum by itself called an alloy. I do know that steel wheels are typically not called "alloy wheels" for some reason; that's reserved for wheels made from an aluminum alloy.

Bike parts. Lots of bike parts are made of aluminum-based mystery alloy so they're marketed as just "alloy". It's pretty annoying when you're a casual builder who actually cares what your bike is made out of.

It happens a lot in cycling circles

Guy I went to high school with

He was the epitome of gullible, and had a conspiracy theorist dad

I picked these various elements because they end in -um rather than -ium when described by their Latin names. Because I think it is funny to complain about aluminum ending in -um.

It's plumbum. Notice how they all end in -um? Just like aluminum? You almost caught the nerd joke.