Hang on, it was you lot that renamed it. That "ium" finish was standard for all metallic elements -- at least, it was in the 1940s when I was at school.
Nah, Davy at first named it Alumium but then changed it to aluminum. It was then changed to aluminium by the others because they didn't like that it didn't follow the ium scheme most other discovers stuck to. The original name by the person who discovered it was aluminum though.
Not all metallic elements follow the ium convention. Not all elements with -ium are metals either. Some are metalloids and selenium is completely non-metalic
My schoolboy education bows to your erudition. I always wondered about that. Thought it was just an Americanism. Now, do you know why sulphur changed to sulfur?
We always spelled it sulfur over here. Both were accepted but Britain standardized as sulphur at some point. Why y'all would change is beyond me. If that's what your saying.
The real question is why they decided to rename Tantalium to Tantalum. Maybe Element99 knows that one.
Wellllllllllllll since it was an English chemist who originally started work on it... we reserve the right to rename it :P Ditto re sulphur it's an ancient thing so since we invented English we can do as we please :P Interesting tho... what do you call sulfuric acid? sulfuric?