A machine-based analysis of the proximity of names of the elements based on 3.3 million abstracts published between 1922 and 2018 in more than 1,000 journals was conducted in 2019 . It revealed a topology (Fig. ) reminiscent of the eight-fold classification. Fig. is a two-dimensional projection of the word embeddings of 100 chemical element names (for example, 'hydrogen') labelled with the corresponding element symbols and clustered (upper legend) according to a tenfold classification. Here the noble metals are treated as transition metals, which they are, rather being specifically identified.