The Puzzle of Mineral Names

DISCOVERING THE LOGIC BY UNDERSTANDING THE PROGRESSION

- BOB JONES

Collecting minerals and reading about them makes you realize there is an odd and sometimes confusing assortment of mineral names that do not seem logical.

Mineral names cover a fantastic variety of categories, including locality names like bisbeeite, surface features like vesuvianite, connections to people like bobjonesite, and elements like gold or cuprite. Add to that mineral named for their geometric form, like tetrahedrite, or color, like pyrargyrite from two Greek words ‘pyr’-fire and ‘argyros’-silver. Minerals are even named using their own chemical element symbols and names like cavansite — CAlcium VANadium SIlicate. We also have a host of mineral names derived from foreign languages like mimetite from the Greece “mimetes.” There really doesn’t seem to be any orderliness to how minerals are named, but as we’ll see, there are guidelines that reveal the logic behind the naming convention.

When I began looking into this confusion, I came across a wonderful old article about mineral names written in 1929. It originally appeared in the American Mineralogist and is now on the internet. In the article, the author talked about all the known minerals of the time, all 1,500. Imagine that! In less than 100 years, through diligent collecting and research, we have reached an impressive total of around 5,000 known mineral species, and the list continues to grow.