stylistic:tone, structural:summarization
Specific elements

Before chemistry became a science, alchemists designed arcane symbols for both metals and common compounds. These were however used as abbreviations in diagrams or procedures; there was no concept of atoms combining to form molecules. With his advances in the atomic theory of matter, John Dalton devised his own simpler symbols, based on circles, to depict molecules.

The current system of chemical notation was invented by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1814. In this system, chemical symbols are not mere abbreviations—though each consists of letters of the Latin alphabet. They are intended as universal symbols for people of all languages and alphabets.

Since Latin was the common language of science at Berzelius' time, his symbols were abbreviations based on the Latin names of elements (they may be Classical Latin names of elements known since antiquity or Neo-Latin coinages for later elements). The symbols are not followed by a period (full stop) as with abbreviations. In most cases, Latin names of elements as used by Berzelius have the same roots as the modern English name. For example, hydrogen has the symbol "H" from Neo-Latin hydrogenium, which has the same Greek roots as English hydrogen. However, in eleven cases Latin (as used by Berzelius) and English names of elements have different roots. Eight of them are the seven metals of antiquity and a metalloid also known since antiquity: "Fe" (Latin ferrum) for iron, "Hg" (Latin hydrargyrum) for mercury, "Sn" (Latin stannum) for tin, "Au" (Latin aurum) for gold, "Ag" (Latin argentum) for silver, "Pb" (Latin plumbum) for lead, "Cu" (Latin cuprum) for copper, and "Sb" (Latin stibium) for antimony. The three other mismatches between Neo-Latin (as used by Berzelius) and English names are "Na" (Neo-Latin natrium) for sodium, "K" (Neo-Latin kalium) for potassium, and "W" (Neo-Latin wolframium) for tungsten. These mismatches came from different suggestings of naming the elements in the Modern era. Initially Berzelius had suggested "So" and "Po" for sodium and potassium, but he changed the symbols to "Na" and "K" later in the same year.

Elements discovered after 1814 were also assigned unique chemical symbols, based on the name of the element. The use of Latin as the universal language of science was fading, but chemical names of newly discovered elements came to be borrowed from language to language with little or no modifications. Symbols of elements discovered after 1814 match their names in English, French (ignoring the acute accent on ⟨ é ⟩), and German (though German often allows alternate spellings with ⟨ k ⟩ or ⟨ z ⟩ instead of ⟨ c ⟩: e.g., the name of calcium may be spelled Calcium or Kalzium in German, but its symbol is always "Ca"). Other languages sometimes modify element name spellings: Spanish iterbio (ytterbium), Italian afnio (hafnium), Swedish moskovium (moscovium); but those modifications do not affect chemical symbols: Yb, Hf, Mc.

Chemical symbols are understood internationally when element names might require translation. There have been some differences in the past. For example, Germans in the past have used "J" (for the name Jod) for iodine, but now use "I" and Iod.

The first letter of a chemical symbol is always capitalized, as in the preceding examples, and the subsequent letters, if any, are always lower case. Thus, the symbols for californium and einsteinium are Cf and Es.