As I was doing some research for my post about hubnerite I came across some information about wolfram. Wolfram is not actually a mineral, but rather a name that was once applied to two different minerals when both were thought to be the same (you can read a little more about this in May 19th’s post Hubnerite: Black Beauty) Despite the fact that wolfram is actually two minerals I would still like to write about it today simply because of the origin of its name. In my post about mineral names I told you that a mineral’s name is often just a description of its properties in another language, usually Latin or Greek. This is the case with the word “wolfram,” but the language used to describe its interesting properties is actually German.
There is a fascinating story behind the name “wolfram.” About five hundred years ago some tin miners in Germany noticed that some of the rocks that they were smelting with the tin ore caused a nasty froth to form on top of the molten metal, which destroyed some of the tin. They named the stone volfram which is composed of the German words volf which means “wolf” and rahm which means “cream” or “froth,” because of the fact that this cream “devoured the tin like a wolf.”
During the time that I have spent learning about minerals and their names I have seen names translated to mean things like “cross stone,” “golden leek,” and even “the stone that leafs apart,” but I think that “wolf cream” is the most inventive one that I’ve ever seen!
P.S. tungsten also used to be called wolfram (this likely has something to do with the fact that tungsten is found in the stone) and it is still known by this name in some countries. That is why tungsten is a W on the periodic table.
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