Seaborgium's naming broke a long-standing convention and caused real controversy, because Glenn Seaborg was still alive when it was proposed, making it the first element ever named after a living person. Some argued this was improper, and the international chemistry body initially ruled the name out, only to reverse itself after protest, so that seaborgium was formally accepted in 1997 while its namesake lived to see it, a distinction that delighted him. Seaborg's own work in reorganising the lower rows of the periodic table, the actinide concept, had made sense of the very elements among which his namesake sits.
Seaborgium has no ancient or esoteric tradition, being a synthetic element with no chemistry beyond the laboratory; its whole story is the naming itself, and the unprecedented honour of an element bearing a living scientist's name. IUPAC's initial objection rested on an existing guideline against naming elements after people still living, a rule adopted, in part, precisely to avoid this kind of situation; the eventual reversal effectively amended that convention, and Seaborg, who died in 1999, enjoyed roughly two years in which an element carried his name during his own lifetime, a distinction still shared by no one else.