Mineral Name Generator

Almost every mineral name follows one rule: take something distinctive about the mineral and add the Greek-derived suffix -ite (occasionally -ine, as in tourmaline or celestine). What goes before the suffix usually falls into one of a few categories. Places give us labradorite (Labrador), vesuvianite (Mount Vesuvius), benitoite (San Benito County) and andalusite (Andalusia). People give us smithsonite (James Smithson), goethite (the poet Goethe), wulfenite, sugilite and grandidierite. Chemistry gives us molybdenite, cassiterite (kassiteros, Greek for tin) and fluorapatite. Properties or appearance give us azurite (azure), rhodochrosite (rose-coloured), magnetite and pyrite (fire, because it sparks).

Old names that predate the system survive too: quartz, galena, gypsum, cinnabar, feldspar and mica are inherited from Latin, German and Arabic mining vocabularies. Since 1959 new species have needed approval from the International Mineralogical Association, which currently recognises about six thousand of them, and inventing one is as simple as choosing a discoverer, locality or property and adding -ite.

The list above pairs roughly 160 real minerals, from rock-forming staples to rarities like painite and taaffeite, with a tail of invented ores such as thorvaldite and voidspar. The invented ones follow the same construction rules so they sit convincingly next to the real thing in a fantasy mine, a sci-fi asteroid survey, or a crafting menu.