Elementymology & Elements Multidict

memory peg	Bright gray metal in pure form, but tends to be a bit darker as the purity decreases melting point 1660 °C; 3020 °F boiling point 3287 °C; 5949 °F density 4.54 g/cc; 283.42 pounds/cubic foot
1791 William Gregor, England
Τιτανος (Titans) = children of the Earth (Greek mythology) named by M.H. Klaproth after 1795

The Cornish clergyman William Gregor (1761-1817) was interested in minerals and was acknowledged as greatly skilled by Berzelius. He analyzed a number of substances such as a black magnetic sand from the Menachan valley in his own parish in Cornwall (England). His analysis was published in 1791. The sand is black, and in external appearance resembles gunpowder. It included 45% reddish brown calx, which dissolved in sulfuric acid to give a yellow solution which became purple when reduced with zinc, tin, or iron. When the pulverized mineral was fused with powdered charcoal (a procedure that often reduces an ore to metal) a purple slag was formed. While he modestly claimed these were only disconnected facts, his friends agreed that this must be a new mineral.

The mineral was named menachanite (or ilmenite), the new earth in it was regarded as the oxide of a new metal, menachin. Mineral and metal were after the spot where it was found. The discovery received no acclaim but when Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817) separated rutile, or red schörl, from Hungary in 1795, he recognized the similarity to Gregor's menachan. He reported (note):

"that menachanite has for its constituent parts Iron, and a peculiar metallic oxide of an unknown nature. By the following examination it will appear that this substance, which besides iron, forms the second chief component principle of menachanite, is precisely the very same which constitutes the Hungarian red schörl."

"Whenever no name can be found for a new fossil which indicates its peculiar and characteristic properties (in which situation I find myself at present) I think it best to choose such a denomination as means nothing of itself, and thus can give no rise to any erroneous ideas. (as Lavoisier had suggested) In consequence of this, as I did in the case of Uranium, I shall borrow the name for this metallic substance from mythology, and in particular from the Titans, the first sons of the earth. I therefore call this new metallic genus Titanium."

The Titans (Τιτανος) are, in Greek mythology, a race of godlike giants, children of the Earth, who were considered to be the personifications of the forces of nature. They are the twelve children (six sons and six daughters) of the Heaven (Όυρανος [Ouranos]) and Earth (Γαια [Gaea]). Each son married, or had children of, one of his sisters. They are: Cronus and Rhea, Iapetus and Themis, Oceanus and Tethys, Hyperion and Theia, Crius and Mnemosyne, and Coeus and Phoebe (Encyclopedia Mythica).

• Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 520-525.