A comparative look at the exchanges between China and Japan’s inorganic compound names, 1842–1945

Abstract

Starting from China’s loss of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894, Chinese people began to widely adopt Japanese chemical terms. Inorganic compounds were the most affected field. Before this dramatic change, Chinese inorganic compounds were mostly written word-by-word after their chemical formula. For example, sodium chloride was written as na lu (鈉氯) and potassium chloride as jia lu (鉀氯). However, from the early 20th century, many Chinese books translated from Japanese sources began to switch the order of the elements and inserted the word hua (化) between the two elements. Therefore, the above-mentioned names became lu hua na (氯化鈉) and lu hua jia (氯化鉀). In the end, China’s official inorganic naming scheme was created after its Japanese counterpart.