Christening a particle is not easy. Do you name it after the person who proposed its existence, or the person who discovered it? Or do you give it a label that is abstract, poetic, whimsical, onomatopoeic, or just plain descriptive?

Democritus proposed the existence of a particle, so he could have named it the democriton, but instead this modest Greek philosopher decided to coin the word a-tomos, meaning ‘not cuttable’, which explains the origin of the word atom. Perversely, today we use the word atom to describe something that is ‘cuttable’, because we know that even the smallest atom, hydrogen, has components that can be pulled part. So we could rename atoms ‘aatoms’, which is to say ‘not not cuttable’.

Inside the atom we find the electron, which also traces its name back to Ancient Greece. Elektron is Greek for amber, and the ancients knew that rubbing amber with a dry cloth would enable it to attract very light objects. We now know that this is because rubbing amber can generate a charge, otherwise known as static electricity, so 19th century scientists used the term electron to describe the first particle that was proven to carry a charge.

The rest of the atom […]