Period 5 element Klaproth named the new element in 1798 after the Latin word for "earth", "tellus". Gold telluride minerals (responsible for the name of Telluride, Colorado) are the most notable natural gold compounds. However, they are not a commercially significant source of tellurium itself, which is normally extracted as by-product of copper and lead production. Tellurium is commercially primarily used in alloys, foremost in steel and copper to improve machinability. Applications in solar panels and as a semiconductor material also consume a considerable fraction of tellurium production. Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The name
Naming of chemical elements after Amerigo Vespucci The non-transuranic element samarium is named after Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, and gadolinium is indirectly named (via the mineral gadolinite), after Johan Gadolin. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named the element gallium after his native land of France (from Latin "Gallia" meaning Gaul) denied that the element's naming was for a pun on his own name ("le coq" means "the rooster" in French, as does "gallus" in Latin). Some chemical elements are named after places on the planet earth. Five are named after currently existing countries – polonium (named after Poland), francium and gallium (named after France), nihonium (named after