Chemical elements in Chinese

[Mark Yong]

I have noticed a striking similarity between the phonetics of some of the Chinese characters for the chemical elements, and their Western counterparts. For instance:

Potassium (or K, kalium) = 鉀
Sodium (or Na, natrium) = 鈉
Calcium (Ca) = 鈣
Aluminium (Al) = 鋁

Were these characters created later (post-Kangxi period), following Western influence? Of course, there are other characters that existed much earlier, and therefore are not phonetically congruent, e.g. 鐵, 銅, 銀 and, of course, 金.

As an aside, I have read somewhere that the radical-phonetic combination permutations available have not been completely exhausted yet, and that there is still room for creation of more characters. Is this still going on (I mean on an official basis) in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong, particularly to support technical terminology?

Cheers,
Mark

[Matt]

For a list of all chemical elements (English, Chinese, and Hanyu Pinyin), please try the following link:

http://www.sinoling.com/yuansu_en.htm

Best,

Matt Trueman
Sinoling.com