Elements 70 and 71
Gadolinite, a mineral (from Ytterby, a village in Sweden), consists of several compounds (oxides or earths): yttria, erbia (sub-component as ytterbia) and terbia.
In 1878 Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac assumed that ytterbia consisted of a new element he called ytterbium (but actually there were two new elements). In 1907 Georges Urbain isolated element 70 and element 71 from ytterbia. He called element 70 neoytterbia ("new ytterbium") and called element 71 lutecia. At about the same time, Carl Auer von Welsbach also independently isolated these and proposed the names aldebaranium (Ad), after the star Aldebaran (in the constellation of Taurus), for element 70 (ytterbium), and cassiopium (Cp), after the constellation Cassiopeia, for element 71 (lutetium), but both proposals were rejected.
Neoytterbia (element 70) was eventually reverted to ytterbium (following Marignac) and in 1949 the spelling of lutecia (element 71) was changed to lutetium; although some German chemists still use cassiopium instead of lutetium.
(Other elements, yttrium (element 39) and gadolinium (element 64), were also discovered in gadolinite and its components, but there was no controversy about their names.)
Read more about this topic: List Of Chemical Elements Naming Controversies
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