Which element's name means 'sun' in Greek?

Helium is the element whose name comes from the Greek word helios, meaning “sun.”

The name was chosen after astronomers detected helium’s distinctive yellow spectral line in sunlight during the 1868 solar eclipse. Norman Lockyer concluded that the line belonged to an unknown element and named it helium, using the Greek word for the Sun. The ending “-ium” was unusual because helium is a gas, not a metal.

Helium was identified in the Sun before it was isolated on Earth. In 1895, William Ramsay extracted it from the uranium mineral cleveite, confirming that the mysterious solar element also existed terrestrially. A common mix-up is confusing helium’s name with its physical properties: helium is famous for being light and nonreactive, but its name refers to the Sun, not lightness or heat.

The same Greek root appears in heliocentric, describing a Sun-centered system, and heliosphere, the region dominated by the solar wind.