why is potassium called that in English and Potasio in Spanish, but it's Latin name is kalium and German uses the Latin word?
The difference comes from two competing names that appeared when the element was discovered in the early 1800s, and different language groups adopted different ones.
The English word comes from potash, the material from which the element was first isolated in 1807 by the chemist Humphry Davy. ([Wikipedia][1])
- Potash literally meant “pot ashes.”