Named for the Titans

Klaproth deliberately reached for myth, naming the element after the Titans, the elder race of Greek gods, children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), who ruled before the Olympians overthrew them. He had already named uranium after the newly discovered planet Uranus, and chose the Titans in the same spirit of grand, cosmic nomenclature rather than for any specific property. The name proved apt in hindsight: titanium's exceptional strength and its role in aircraft, spacecraft, ships and implants give it a fittingly titanic reputation. The association is one of pure naming, a nineteenth-century chemist borrowing the grandeur of Greek myth for a metal whose real powers were not yet known.

Titanium dioxide's white pigment, titanium white, gradually replaced the traditional lead white used by painters for centuries, offering superior opacity without lead's severe toxicity, a changeover largely complete by the mid twentieth century that altered both the health of artists and the chemistry of the paint tube. The same compound's ability to scatter and absorb ultraviolet light makes it a common active ingredient in mineral sunscreens, so a metal named for the primordial Titans now shields human skin from the Sun in a far more literal sense than its mythic namesake ever implied.