Chemical element "sulfur" over the British "sulphur". However, elements that are practical to sell in bulk in many countries often still have locally used national names, and countries whose national language does not use the Latin alphabet are likely to use the IUPAC element names. According to IUPAC, chemical elements are not proper nouns in English; consequently, the full name of an element is not routinely capitalized in English, even if derived from a proper noun, as in californium and einsteinium. Isotope names of chemical elements are also uncapitalized if written out, "e.g.," carbon-12 or uranium-235. Chemical element "symbols" (such as Cf
Chemical element Chemical element A chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (that is, the same atomic number, or "Z"). For example, the atomic number of oxygen is 8, so the element oxygen consists of all atoms which have exactly 8 protons. 118 elements have been identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radionuclides, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant