Origin and history of titanium

early 15c., a name for the sun (c. 1200 as a surname, Hugo Titan), from Latin titan, from Greek titan, "a member of a mythological race of primordial deities" (originally six giant sons and six daughters of Gaia and Uranus) who were overthrown by Zeus and the other gods. The war was a popular theme for Greek artists and writers. The name is perhaps from titō "sun, day," which probably is a loan-word from a language of Asia Minor.

The sense of "person or thing of enormous size or ability," with lower case, is by 1828. The Latin poets also used the name of the sun, and it later also was extended to descendants of the Titans (Prometheus, etc.).

Titan was given as a name to planet Saturn's largest satellite in 1831 (Greek Kronos, equivalent of Roman Saturn, was leader of the titans). It was discovered 1655 by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who named it Saturni Luna "moon of Saturn." Others soon were found, however, and all were given numbers in order. But as new ones continued to be found between the known moons, William Herschel proposed using suitable proper names out of mythology for the multiplying moons of Saturn and Jupiter, a proposal readily accepted.

Related: Titaness. Titania was a name poetically applied to Diana, also to the Queen of Fairyland, consort of Oberon. Titanos (late 14c.) was an old name for magnesia, held to be one of the two principal ingredients of the philosopher's stone.

rare metallic element, 1797, named 1789 in Modern Latin by its discoverer, German chemist and mineralogist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, for the recently found planet Uranus (q.v.).