Elementymology & Elements Multidict

memory peg	Gray metal which forms intense green solutions melting point 1453 °C; 2647 °F boiling point 2732 °C; 4950 °F density 8.9 g/cc; 555.73 pounds/cubic foot
1751 Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, Sweden
Kupfernickel = devil's copper (German)

Naturally occurring nickel-copper alloys, called paktong, were used in China over 2000 years ago. In 235 BC, coins in China were minted from nickel. Saxon miners were familiar with the reddish-coloured ore, a combination of arsenic and nickel (niccolite, NiAs), which superficially resembles Cu₂O. These miners attributed their inability to extract copper from this source to the work of the devil and named the ore Kupfernickel (in Swedish kopparnickel). Originally it was a term of abuse used by the miners in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), who searching for Silver found this "inferior" metal. The word is derived from Kupfer = Copper and Nickel = demon, goblin, rascal (a pet form of the name Nikolaus [Nicholas], hence Old Nick "the devil"). Thus kupfernickel - Latinized as Cuprum Nicolai - can be translated as "old Nick's Copper" (or "Devil's Copper").
The word was used in the miners in Upper Saxony, as is indicated by an entry dated 1654 in a miner's register of Schneeberg, Saxony. The word is first found in a printed book in 1694, in Urban Hjärne's Een Kort Anladning till Åtstillige Malm- och Bergarters, Mineraliers, Wäxters, och Jordeflags, sampt Fleva Sätsame Tings (note), a work describing useless ores and minerals. Hjärne does not give any description of the ore.

In 1751 the Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (1722-1765) isolated an impure metal from ores from a "loser Koboltgruben" in the parish of Färlinga in Hälsingland (Sweden), probably Gersdorffite (NiAsS). He identified in it a new half-metal. A few years later, he found out that his half-metal was identical with the metallic component of Kupfernickel, sent to him from Germany. For the new half-metal he chose to retain the name Kupfernickel, or shortly Nickel, until it was sure it was a new metal. His results were confirmed by Torbern Olof Bergman in 1775 (note). Like all metals, Nickel was not considered an element until Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) proposed his new chemistry.

• In the 19th century a native Czech name was proposed: "pochvistík".

 

The American 5-cent coin is called "nickel", but is made of 75% Copper and only 25% Nickel (see: US Buffalo Nickel and the First Nickel Coin).

• Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 157-163.
• Nickel. Gmelins Handbuch der anorganische Chemie, 8. Aufl.; System-Nummer 57 (1967).
• Kelly Snyder and Peter Russell, Nickel
• Burde & Co., Nickel und Nickel-Legierungen