The International union of pure and applied chemistry (Iupac) has officially credited the team of Sigurd Hofmann at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany, with the discovery of element number 112. With a relative mass of 277, it is the heaviest element yet to be officially recognised.

Hofmann and his team now have the honour of proposing a name for the newly-ratified element, although their suggestion will have to be assessed and approved by Iupac, which could take up to six months.

To celebrate, we thought we’d ask you all to suggest unofficial names – we can’t make any claims to be able to influence the official decision, but we’d love to hear what you’d call 112 and why – besides, anything’s got to be better than Iupac’s systematic moniker of ununbium.

Traditionally, new elements are often named after the place where they were discovered (for example, yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium are all named after the Swedish town of Ytterby where they were mined), or famous scientists (Einsteinium, Rutherfordium, Mendelevium and Curium spring to mind).

The Darmstadt team first observed atoms of element 112 in 1996, but it has taken a long time for the work to be repeated and thoroughly verified. In 2007, a group from the Paul Scherrer institute in Switzerland led by Robert Eichler and Heinz Gäggeler confirmed the existence of 112 and showed it had properties similar to mercury, under which it sits in the periodic table.

This brings the total number of new elements officially discovered at GSI to six, following bohrium (107), hassium (108), meitnerium (109), darmstadtium (110), and roentgenium (111).

We’d love to see what all you faithful blog-readers think element 112 should be named, so post your suggestion as a comment below.

Phillip Broadwith, Science Correspondent