In 1831 Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovered the element in a new oxide he found while working with iron ores. Later that year, Friedrich Wöhler confirmed del Río's earlier work. Sefström chose a name beginning with V, which had not yet been assigned to any element. He called the element "vanadium" after Old Norse "Vanadís" (another name for the Norse Vanr goddess Freyja, whose attributes include beauty and fertility), because of the many beautifully colored chemical compounds it produces. In 1831, the geologist George William Featherstonhaugh suggested that vanadium should be renamed ""rionium"" after del Río, but this suggestion was not followed.