In chemistry, heavy transuranic elements receive a permanent trivial name and symbol only after their synthesis has been confirmed. This has been a protracted and highly political process in some cases (see element naming controversy). In order to discuss newly synthesized and as-yet unsynthesized elements without ambiguity, the IUPAC assigns a temporary systematic name and symbol to such elements. The origin of this idea came from the successful development of regular rules for the naming of organic compounds containing carbon. Chemistry (from Greek χημεία khemeia[1] meaning alchemy) is the science of matter at the atomic to molecular scale, dealing primarily with collections of atoms, such as molecules, crystals, and metals. ... In chemistry, transuranium elements (also known as transuranic elements) are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92, the atomic number of Uranium. ... In chemistry, a trivial name (also common or vernacular name) is a non-systematic name. ... The names for the chemical elements 104 to 108 have been the subject of a major controversy starting in the 1960s which was only finally resolved in 1997. ... Look up element in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to the advancement of chemistry. ...

The IUPAC rules

The temporary names are derived systematically from the element's atomic number. Each digit is translated to a 'numerical root', according to the table. The roots are concatenated, and the name is completed with the ending -ium. Some of the roots are Latin and others are Greek; the reason is to avoid two digits starting with the same letter. There are two sandhi rules designed to prevent odd-looking names. In chemistry and physics, the atomic number (Z) is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom. ... Concatenation is a standard operation in computer programming languages (a subset of formal language theory). ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ...

• If bi or tri is followed by the ending ium (i.e. the last digit is 2 or 3), the result is '-bium' or -'trium', not '-biium' or '-triium'.
• If enn is followed by nil (i.e. the sequence -90- occurs), the result is '-ennil-', not '-ennnil-'.

The systematic symbol is formed by taking the first letter of each root, converting the first to a capital.

All elements up to and including atomic number 111 have received permanent trivial names and symbols, so the use of systematic names and symbols is recommended only for elements 112 and above. Therefore in practice, systematic names are just those with 3-letter symbols.

Note: These examples show conjectured elements. As of 2006, ununoctium, element 118, is the highest element known.

• The IUPAC recommendation. Untitled draft, March 2004. (PDF, 143 kB).
• Systematic naming of Elements with Atomic Numbers Greater than 110 (PDF, 41 kB).