Question: How did sodium get its name ?

Jen Todd Jones answered on 8 Mar 2013:

This is an excellent question for brains – it turns out that taking Sodium in a special form can help headaches (but don’t try this at home or school!!), and the name comes from a very old word ‘suda’ meaning head-pain.

In fact Sodium is very important for the brain at the cell-level, together with Chloride these two chemicals are responsible for the communication between neurons (cells in the brain) that enable us to think and move! There are billions of neurons no the brain, and each one is closely connected to another by a gap called a ‘synapse’, Sodium and Chloride are the chemicals that help bridge this gap when one neuron wants to speak to the other and pass a message along across the brain.