Ytterby

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A village in Sweden notable for its historical quarry where rare earth elements were first discovered and named after it; also refers to the source location for elements such as yttrium, terbium, and erbium
2. An area in Sweden distinguished by a mine that served as the origin for the identification of multiple rare earth metals, which took their names from the site; signifies a key geographic landmark in chemical element discovery
3. A Swedish locality recognized for a mining site that led to the naming of several rare earth elements, marking its importance in both geology and chemistry as the birthplace of these metals' namesakes

Etymology: Ytterby is a village on the island of Resarö in the Stockholm archipelago, and its name is built from two old Norse elements. The first part, "ytter", is the comparative of "ut" ("out"), so it means "outer" or "outermost," as in the Swedish "ytter." The second part, "by," means "farm" or "village," the same word that turns up in many Scandinavian place names, and it traces back to the Old Norse "býr," "bōr" and the verb "búa," "to dwell." Together the name means roughly "the outer settlement." The village gained a second and far more famous life in the 18th and 19th centuries, when a feldspar and quartz quarry there yielded a black mineral that the chemist Carl Axel Arrhenius sent to be studied. From it, researchers isolated several new oxides, and each new element was named for the place: yttrium, terbium, erbium, and ytterbium. Four elements in the periodic table carry a version of this village's name, which makes it one of the most unusual place names in chemistry.

Synonyms: Ytterby village, Ytterby mine