Although one can have a field day with the spelling peculiarities of British English ("gaol", which flies in the face of standard English pronunciation rules, is one of my personal favorite "WTFs"), and despite my own preference for our own American form "aluminum", I have to admit that "aluminium" is far from just a Brit peculiarity. From checking the translations listen in the Wiktionary entry for "aluminium", most of the world (not just the English-speaking world) outside of North America seems to call the metal by some sort of name derived from that form. Even Americans used to use that form quite often until "aluminum" decisively took over during the early 1900s.
The history is convoluted. It was a British chemist, Humphrey Davy, who first suggested the name "aluminum" for the metal in 1812, after earlier proposing and then abandoning "alumium". Davy's choice was criticized by another Brit, Thomas Young, who thought "aluminium" had a more "classical" feel, which was a big deal back then. Young's version caught on even more among Americans than among Brits for several decades, until Noah Webster chose "aluminum" for his dictionary and thus started the American drift toward that form.
Hell, just call it Al and save us all the trouble.
Edited by Colin Howell (06/14/20 12:08 AM)
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