The best name for lithium is, in my opinion "laufsteinsmálmur", the "metal in a leafy stone", so-named because of the leafy flakes in the mineral in which it was originally found, nl. petallite (laufsteinn, laufspat). The metal was named after its MINERAL origin, because the only known alkali-metals known at the time of the discovery, were obtained from PLANT sources. The construction "Laufsteinsmálmur (leaf-stone-metal) is found upon the same idea as what the international name was found upon, its mineral, stony (Greek "lithos", stone), with this difference that the "leafy" nature of the stone must be specified, because "steinsmálmur" (metal form a stone), would make no sense.
Yet, there's another one, this time based on a unique property of the element: "lyndismálmur" ("lyndi" means "mental condition" and refers to lithium use, in the form of compounds, like lithium carbonate (kolsúr lyndismálmur, "carbacidic mood-metal" , for psychiatric conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.)
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