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I was looking at a poster for an international chemistry olympiad. Its background contains some random elements as periodic table tiles.

One of them said "Estrontium." A google search returned nothing but clip art. Is this an accepted spelling internationally (similar to the way Spanish speakers prefix "e" on words starting with "s" followed by a consonant) or a careless typo on their part? My chemistry teacher was equally confused.

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    $\begingroup$ Sounds like Spanish to me. Olympiads may be international, but element names definitely aren't. $\endgroup$ – Ivan Neretin May 8 at 13:52
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    $\begingroup$ That's pretty weird, since in spanish it would be "estroncio". The name strontium comes from that of a scotish village. What was the language of the poster? $\endgroup$ – Buck Thorn May 8 at 13:58
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    $\begingroup$ Probably multiculturalism at its best. When I studied in a public high school, there was a periodic table in the classroom where element thallium had a handwritten prefix "geni-". "eStrontium" isn't that bad in comparison though:) $\endgroup$ – andselisk♦ May 8 at 13:59
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    $\begingroup$ @jeffB Episode with Tl is an unrelated story, just a memory to spice things up. As to why I call the precedent multicultural: an incorrectly formed word using Spanish prefix, Scottish name and Latin suffix has somehow managed to pass quality control and show up on a poster of an international olympiad. I thought it was obvious:) $\endgroup$ – andselisk♦ May 8 at 16:56
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    $\begingroup$ Seems like a typo, as all the spanish periodic tables I could find give the spanish translation of strontium as estroncio. None of the elements seem to use the "-ium" suffix when translated into spanish, so it looks like they just forgot to fully translate the word. $\endgroup$ – Tyberius May 8 at 17:33
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"Estrontium" is not used as an element name in any language. It appears that the error traces to a single user by the name of Alejo Miranda (listed as from Ecuador) who has posted a large collection of periodic tables and individual element clip art to shuttersock, iphoto, etc. in which "estrontium" is incorrectly used as the English name for strontium. The Spanish periodic table correctly uses estroncio. The link to the gllery at shutterstock is

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Alejo+Miranda?searchterm=estrontium&search_source=base_gallery&language=en&sort=popular&measurement=px&safe=true

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