>>What I want to know is how y'all get "aluminum" so wrong.
>
>Well we had quite a thread on this quite some time back, but I can't find it. I think it's y'all got it wrong, and that the name was changed FROM the original aluminum to be in keeping with other elements such as deutirium, radium, chromium, potassium, etc. Having said that though, what happened to platinum?
Here's from
http://chemistry.about.com/library/blal.htm :
"Davy proposed the name aluminum for the metal and later agreed to change it to aluminum. The name aluminum was adopted to conform with the "ium" ending of most elements. This spelling is in use in most countries. Aluminium was also the spelling in the U.S. until 1925, when the American Chemical Society officially decided to use the name aluminum instead."
Note the nice play with spelling in the first sentence :).