Chinese Element Names: How Radicals Reveal the Periodic Table
July 2026
Every Chinese element name carries a built-in label: 气 for gases, 钅 for metals, 石 for solids, 氵 for liquids. Learn the system — invented by Qing-dynasty chemists — and you can tell what an element is before you know its name.
If you study chemistry and Chinese, you get a pleasant surprise when you open a Chinese periodic table: every element name already tells you what kind of substance it is. The character itself is a label — gas, metal, solid, or liquid — built from a single radical.
The four element families
Chinese chemists grouped the elements by their state of matter, and each group got its own radical. Learn the four radicals below and you can “read” most of the periodic table.
Gases use the 气 radical on top:
- 氢 (qīng) – hydrogen
- 氧 (yǎng) – oxygen
- 氮 (dàn) – nitrogen
- 氦 (hài) – helium
- 氖 (nǎi) – neon
Metals use the 钅 metal radical:
- 铁 (tiě) – iron
- 铜 (tóng) – copper
- 银 (yín) – silver
- 钠 (nà) – sodium
- 钙 (gài) – calcium
Nearly every metal element name contains the metal radical: 铁, 铜, 银, 钠, 钙, 锌, 铝. 金 (gold) is the element that gave the radical its shape.
Open 金 character page →Solid non-metals use the 石 (stone) radical:
- 碳 (tàn) – carbon
- 硅 (guī) – silicon
- 硫 (liú) – sulfur
- 磷 (lín) – phosphorus
And liquids use the 氵 water radical — the only element with its own water mark is bromine:
溴 (xiù, bromine) is the only non-metal that is liquid at room temperature, so it is written with three drops of water.
Open 水 character page →The famous exception: 汞
Mercury breaks all the rules and proves them at once. It is a metal, but it is liquid at room temperature — so its name uses 水 (water) as the bottom component instead of the metal radical: 汞 (gǒng), written 工 over 水. Liquid metal? The character says exactly that.
Who invented this system
These characters were created in the late 19th century, when Chinese chemists — most famously Xu Shou (徐寿) and his colleagues — translated the Western periodic table. Their method was brilliant and simple: take a sound close to the Western name, then add the radical for the element’s state. 氢 sounds like the “hy” of hydrogen and gets the gas radical; 镁 sounds like “magnesium” and gets the metal radical.
Why this matters for your Chinese
The periodic table is the ultimate proof of the idea behind our radicals guide: learn one radical and a whole category opens up. 气, 钅, 石 and 氵 give you the keys to hundreds of scientific words — and the same habit of looking for the radical works everywhere in Chinese, not just in chemistry.
Write 金 and 水 yourself, then explore the radical families with a printable practice sheet.
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