 Nickel silver is named due to its silvery appearance, but it contains no elemental silver unless plated.The name "German silver" refers to its development by 19th-century German metalworkers from the Chinese alloy known as (白銅) ("white copper" or cupronickel).All modern, commercially important nickel silvers (such as those standardized under ASTM B122) contain significant amounts of zinc, and are sometimes considered a subset of brass.