Fluorine named the acidic product "fluss-spats-syran" (fluorspar acid). In 1810, the French physicist André-Marie Ampère suggested that hydrogen and an element analogous to chlorine constituted hydrofluoric acid. Sir Humphry Davy proposed that this then-unknown substance be named "fluorine" from fluoric acid and the "-ine" suffix of other halogens. This word, with modifications, is used in most European languages; Greek, Russian, and some others (following Ampère's suggestion) use the name "ftor" or derivatives, from the Greek φθόριος ("phthorios", destructive). The New Latin name "fluorum" gave the element its current symbol F; Fl was used in early papers. Initial studies on fluorine were
Chlorine then be separated and purified from chlorine trifluoride and its reactants. Its properties are mostly intermediate between those of chlorine and fluorine. It will react with many metals and nonmetals from room temperature and above, fluorinating them and liberating chlorine. It will also act as a chlorofluorinating agent, adding chlorine and fluorine across a multiple bond or by oxidation: for example, it will attack carbon monoxide to form carbonyl chlorofluoride, COFCl. It will react analogously with hexafluoroacetone, (CF)CO, with a potassium fluoride catalyst to produce heptafluoroisopropyl hypochlorite, (CF)CFOCl; with nitriles RCN to produce RCFNCl; and with the sulfur oxides SO