French king Louis XVI created a Consultative Commission for Units to create a new decimal system of measurement. This royal commission founded very beginnings for the "decimal metric system", which has later evolved into the contemporary SI. The original goal of this royal commission (including such aristocrats as Lavoisier, later guillotined) was creating a unit of mass that was called "grave" and symbolized G. This mass unit, whose name is derived from word "gravity" was used early, since 1793. It would be defined as the mass of a cubic decimeter of water at the freezing point. The definition of grave originally would be represented in an artifact mass standard. A milligrave (mG), alternatively called gram, was to be 1/1000 of a grave, a kilograve (kG), alternatively called tonne, was to be 1000 graves. However, metric system didn't come in effect until after the French Revolution. After the French Revolution, the new revolutionary government captured the idea of the metric system, but introduced some significant alterations. Because since many mass measurements of that time were made in masses smaller than one grave, French scientists fearing that a grave would be too big for every-day use, decided in cooperation with Republican government, that the unit of mass should be the "gram". Because one gram standard was hard to use, and too small for establishing, especially to make a defining prototype of it, they decided too that the original definition of one-grave prototype should be in turn named under a different name, the kilogram, that was introduced in 1795, thus in turn the definition prototype began be known as the "kilogram of the archives". Because to that, since 1875, the unit of mass known since that as the "kilogram", was redefined by a new platinum-iridium prototype whose mass was strictly the same as the mass of "kilogram of the archives". In this way, an original name "grave" was finally rejected, and the name "kilogram" adopted instead for the base unit of the SI. That decision of the Republican government had been mainly politically motivated, because name "grave" was at that time politically incorrect and resembled the aristocratic title of the markgrave, which was the alternative name for the title "count", which title among other nobility titles wasn't compatible with the notion of égalité. Because of this history, SI has now the inconsistency of a base unit with its name including a kilo prefix. Due to that, many purists are unofficially dubbing again a kilogram with the original "grave" term, introducing in this way full consistency into the SI. This solution of restoring name "grave" once again would be the best proposed remedy to this lack of consistency in the SI, because "grave" was once original historic name of this unit used in practice. This condition is not matched by any other newer proposed names, such as: berg, bes, bob, borda, brieze, brize, dalembert, dimno, einstein, fortin, galileo, gaul, gaulle, giorgi, gravet, hyle, iners, inertia, ka, kepler, ker, kig, kilg, kilon, klog, kog, lib, libra, moles, neogramme, pig, quant, quilo, quram, qurram, sigramme, stathm, statmo, yle, which were never applied practically to kilogram in sense of metric base unit of mass. Louis XVI Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 - January 21, 1793), was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French in 1791-1792. ... Cover of brochure The International System of Units. ... Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 - May 8, 1794) was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. ... Gravity is a force of attraction that acts between bodies that have mass. ... Liberty Leading the People, a painting by Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 but which has come to be generally accepted as symbolic of French popular uprisings against the monarchy in general. ... BIC pen cap, about 1 gram. ... BIC pen cap, about 1 gram. ... The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... Cover of brochure The International System of Units. ... Tympanum of a church Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood), is the motto of the French Republic. ... Cover of brochure The International System of Units. ... Kilo (symbol: k) is a prefix in the SI system denoting 103 or 1000. ... Look up prefix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ... Cover of brochure The International System of Units. ... Cover of brochure The International System of Units. ... The international prototype, made of platinum-iridium, which is kept at the BIPM under conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889. ...

References

http://www.bipm.org/en/si/history-si/name_kg.html

http://www.quid.fr/2006/Unites_De_Mesure/Unites_De_Masse/