Chemical element chemical bonds, they form chemical compounds. Only a minority of elements are found uncombined as relatively pure minerals. Among the more common of such native elements are copper, silver, gold, carbon (as coal, graphite, or diamonds), and sulfur. All but a few of the most inert elements, such as noble gases and noble metals, are usually found on Earth in chemically combined form, as chemical compounds. While about 32 of the chemical elements occur on Earth in native uncombined forms, most of these occur as mixtures. For example, atmospheric air is primarily a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and
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