a) embluloft (shorter version of hjáfrumloft, hjá- (additional) + frumloft (primordial gas)): Helium was formed by Big Bang nucleosythesis from hydrogen.
As the universe expands, it cools. Free neutrons and protons are less stable than helium nuclei, and the protons and neutrons have a strong tendency to form helium-4. However, forming helium-4 requires the intermediate step of forming deuterium. At the time at which nucleosynthesis begins, the temperature is high enough for the mean energy per particle to be greater than the binding energy of deuterium; therefore any deuterium that is formed is immediately destroyed (a situation known as the deuterium bottleneck). Hence, the formation of helium-4 is delayed until the universe becomes cool enough to form deuterium (at about T = 0.1 MeV), when there is a sudden burst of element formation.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis
It turned out that hjáfrumloft wasn't to the liking of some Icelanders due to the two consecutive prefixes: it sounded akward in their ears. The problem can be solved by expressing the idea of hjá- additional and frum original by embla, askur or edda, ái. My friend, a student at faculty of chemistry at the University of Ghent associated hydrogen with masculinity because of its vigourous chemical behaviour and helium with femininity in that it provides the platform for the basic stellar nucleosynthesis like the triple and quadruple alpha proces which produces carbon and oxygen respectively, two elements crucial to organic chemistry and as a consequence, to life. For that reason embluloft, embluefni or edduloft are better options than hjáfrumloft.
This term, hjáfrumloft is a syllable shorter than "frumeðalloft" and describes the place of helium on the timeline of the history of the universe just after hydrogen, the mother of all elements.
b) eðalvetni: noble hydrogen, neohydrogen, the new element generated from hydrogen.
c) reðli (i-shift of röðull, sun)
d) sóllyfti
2) neon:
1) nýloft (simplest and shortest solution)
2) eðalflúr (I eventually came to the conclusion that simply nýloft was after all the most simple and flexible purism possible for the element)
3) letriloft: the "lazier" gas, after "letiloft" (argon, the "lazy", "inactive" gas). I'm not sure the comparative of latur (lazy), letri exists next to latari, but I guess it is)
3) argon:
1) letiloft (means "lazy gas". I couldn't icelandicize "geon" (see previous article) with a short flexible word. I can't get any shorter than 'jarðareðalloft', sadly. So I stick to the loan-translation "lazy air")
2) eðalselti (eðal- (noble) + selti (chlorine), see: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7181462476705584294#editor/target=post;postID=4384057641244178684 )
4) krypton:
örloft (The prefix ör- refers, as in örefni ("trace-element", Íslensk Orðabók handa skólum og almenningi, 1992) to the fact that krypton is a rare noble gas, which was, after the element's discovery, expressed by deriving the name from the Greek kryptos "hidden". At first I thought of contenting myself with constructions like dullyfti, hulduloft, ect until I stumbled upon a much more subtle and precise way of designating it. In Icelandic, ör- as a prefix is used as the equivalent of the international prefix micro- in the "non-metrical sense", like in örbylgjuofn "microwave oven" or örgjörvi "microprocessor", where ör- points to smallness in the micrometer range, but not exactly one micrometre, which would require the use of the adapted metrical prefix mikró- (mikrómetri). Nevertheless, ör- and mikró- are somewhat linked up because both are the translation of the prefix micro- in most modern languages both the metrical and non-metrical sense. Krypton's concentration in the earth's atmosphere is about 1 part per million, and even if this would change in the coming 10 million years, it will only be a very marginal one, so we can safely expect örloft or örlyfti to resist the corrosion of time for many megayears to come. Information that convinced me to found the name of this element upon this property I found on the webpage of the Dutch map-historian Peter van der Krogt, who has built an impressive, unrivaled webpage about the names of the chemical elements in 100 different langauges, which information about the history of the elements, old obsolete names. On this site I read about the students of the Dorseyville middle school, whom were given the assignment of creating a web page for each element with a list of facts, properties and, most intersting, a new element name based upon the physical or chemical properties of that specific element. A student named Bethany called krypton "millionthatmospherium".
See: http://www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/dms.php
I'm quite confident about the choice of örloft or örlyfti in the case of krypton for it accurately points to the element's "micro-abundance" of being one millionth part of the earth's atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton (see under "natural occurence")
5) xenon:
1) valloft (Val- is an Old Germanic prefix meaning 'foreign, strange' (e.g.Valland (France, Italy), valeik (teak tree), valhnota (walnut)).
2) framandloft (from Green xenon "stranger", compare "framandsteinn" (Icelandic for xenolith)
6) radon:
1) geislaloft (thoron: þórsloft, radon: maríuloft (maríuglóð = radium), actinon (þórálsloft (þórál, the "aluminium" (read "trivalent element") next to "thorium")
2) blyfti (blý (lead) + lyfti (i-shift of loft (air)), a short-cut of blýþungt loft.
