Native phonetic writing systems are primarily used for element names in Japanese (Katakana), Korean (Hangul) and Vietnamese (chữ Quốc ngữ).
Unlike characters for unofficial varieties of Chinese (e.g., written Cantonese) or other now-defunct ad hoc characters (e.g., those by the Empress Wu), the names for the elements are official, consistent, and taught (with Mandarin pronunciation) to every Chinese and Taiwanese student who has attended public schools (usually by the first year of middle school).
[1] Some metallic elements were already familiar to the Chinese, as their ores were already excavated and used extensively in China for construction, alchemy, and medicine.
These include the long-established group of "Five Metals" (五金) — gold (金), silver (銀/银), copper (銅/铜), iron (鐵/铁), and tin (錫/锡) — as well as lead (鉛/铅) and mercury (汞).
However, this rule was not rigorously followed in the past, and confusingly, the names of tin (锡) and selenium (硒) both have the pronunciation xī with the same tone.
The alternative pronunciation xí for tin is recommended by the National Committee for Approval of Terms in Science and Technology (全国科学技术名词审定委员会).
锡 (tin) and 硒 (selenium) are not homophones in Nanjing Mandarin, which was the prestige dialect of Chinese when most elements were named, which was until the late 19th century.
The phonetic component of 锡, 易 (yì), was accurate when the character was invented around 3000 years ago, but not now because of sound change.
In Middle Chinese 锡 was an entering tone character, a closed syllable ending in -p/-t/-k (or -ʔ in some modern dialects).
But 硒 was constructed in the late 19th century using the (still accurate) phonetic 西 (xī), which in Middle Chinese was a level tone character, an open syllable with a vowel ending.
The "water" radical (水) is not used much here, as only two elements (bromine and mercury) are truly liquid at standard room temperature and pressure.
Mercury (汞), now grouped with the heavy metals, was long classified as a kind of fluid in ancient China.
There is a Chinese analog of the -ic/-ous nomenclature for higher/lower oxidation states: -ous is translated as 亚 (yà, 'minor; secondary'): for example, FeCl2 is 氯化亚铁 and FeCl3 is 氯化铁.
Subsequently, in January 2017, the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies published four naming characters for these elements.
[4] The Chinese characters for these symbols are: Primordial From decay Synthetic Border shows natural occurrence of the element
For example, 鈹 (beryllium), 鉻 (chromium), 鑭 (lanthanum), and 鏷 (protactinium), are obscure characters meaning "needle", "hook", "harrow", and "raw iron", respectively.
[5] The isotopes of hydrogen – protium (1H), deuterium (D) and tritium (T) – are written 氕 piē, 氘 dāo and 氚 chuān, respectively, in both simplified and traditional writing.
[citation needed] In 1871, John Fryer and Shou Xu proposed the modern convention of exclusively using single characters for element names.
[7] Like other words in the language, elements' names in Japanese can be native (yamatokotoba), from China (Sino-Japanese) or from Europe (gairaigo).
For example: Pre-modern (18th-century) elements often are the Korean pronunciation of their Japanese equivalents, e.g., In Vietnamese, some of the elements known since antiquity and medieval times are loanwords from Chinese, such as copper (đồng from 銅), tin (thiếc from 錫), mercury (thuỷ ngân from 水銀), sulfur (lưu huỳnh from 硫黃), oxygen (dưỡng khí from 氧氣; oxi or oxy is the more common name) and platinum (bạch kim from 白金; platin is another common name).
Before the Latin alphabet was introduced, sắt was rendered as 𨫊, bạc as 鉑, chì as 𨨲, vàng as 鐄, kền as 𨪝 and kẽm as 𨯘 in Chữ Nôm.