Coined 1789 after planet Uranus, itself named for the Greek sky god — etymologically 'the sky metal.'
A chemical element (symbol U, atomic number 92), a dense, silvery-grey, weakly radioactive metal used as fuel in nuclear reactors and, in its enriched form, in nuclear weapons.
Coined by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789, naming the element after the planet Uranus, which had itself been discovered only eight years earlier by William Herschel in 1781. The planet was named after Ouranos (Οὐρανός), the Greek god of the sky, the primordial deity who personified the heavens. Greek 'ouranós' means 'sky, heaven' and may derive from Proto-Indo-European *worsó- (rain) or *h₂wers- (to rain, moisten), connecting the sky to rainfall. Key
Klaproth named uranium in 1789, the year the French Revolution began. He could not have imagined that 156 years later, his element would be used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The god Ouranos was castrated and overthrown by his son Kronos — a myth about the violent transfer of cosmic power that proved grimly