Elementymology & Elements Multidict

memory peg	Yellow-gray metal which readily oxidizes forming a multitude of beautiful colors melting point 822 °C; 1512 °F boiling point 1597 °C; 2907 °F density 5.24 g/cc; 327.31 pounds/cubic foot
1901 Eugène-Anatole Demarçay, France
Europa, continent

The story of the new rare earth elements was not finished by Lecoq's discovery of Samarium. In fact, Lecoq's samarium was a mixture of Samarium and Europium.

Eugène-Anatole Demarçay (1852-1904) separated it in 1901 by fractional crystallization of double Magnesium nitrates (note). Although as early as 1892 Lecoq himself had obtained basic fractions from Samarium-Gadolinium concentrates having spark spectral lines not accounted for by Samarium or Gadolinium and thus by new elements, which he provisionally named Zε and Zζ (note). And in 1896 Demarçay himself had announced a new element between Samarium and Gadolinium, provisionally indicated with Σ (note), and in 1900 he showed that this element was identical with Zζ. Only in 1901 he succeeded to separate the element and could get it its name:

 

See also: Chronological list of discovery of the rare earths and their names

A more modern etymology is that the name Europe is derived from the Assyrian ereb, ireb, meaning "sunset, west", thus Land in the West, as opposite to açu, sunrise or East, from which the continent name Asia is derived (note) .

• Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 667-699.
• Seltene Erden. Gmelins Handbuch der anorganische Chemie, 8. Aufl.; System-Nummer 39 (1938).