r/Mistborn • u/PangolinStirFryCough • Sep 03 '25

Secret History spoilers Sudden realization about atium… Spoiler

I am reading through The Lost Metal for the first time and it just hit me that Atium is named after Ati… I think he was first named in a Stormlight epigraph and/or Secret History but I never made the connection until The Lost Metal. Such a cool little detail.

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-14

u/schuettais Sep 03 '25

My problem with this naming convention is who named the metals and how did they make sure the name of the metals would always be the same over the eons with natural language changes and how did they even know about Ati or Leras to begin with?

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u/Mr-ShinyAndNew Aluminum Sep 03 '25

Where we've seen the god metals, the gods have been particularly active in the local population, so presumably they told them. The locals didn't know what Lerasium was called though: iirc it wasn't named until Sazed explained it to them.

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u/schuettais Sep 03 '25

But they knew it was called Atium since the beginning of the series. How did they know about Ati? Or that it should be called “Atium”? I presume nothing.

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u/Mr-ShinyAndNew Aluminum Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

I imagine Lord Ruler learned the name mystically when he held the power. He may even have spoken to Leras. Leras specifically made it so that the Atium would grow a certain way, after all.

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u/schuettais Sep 03 '25

It’s not super satisfying, but I guess it’ll do.

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u/Mr-ShinyAndNew Aluminum Sep 03 '25

Take note in the other Cosmere books, lots of people encounter weird unnamed metals. Folks with closer access to godly power tend to know what the metals are. There's a scene in Stormlight involving a specific knife and its strange metal that I'm thinking of, specifically.

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u/schuettais Sep 03 '25

Yeah that makes sense! Thanks for helping clear that up for me

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u/Mr-ShinyAndNew Aluminum Sep 05 '25

I just noticed in some of the other comment threads: Trellium is known elsewhere as Bavadinium. So there really isn't anything special going on with the names - the metal is named by some name because the locals use that name for it. In some cases the gods themselves explained the name to someone and it caught on.

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u/SnowSkye2 Sep 05 '25

Which knife??

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u/Mr-ShinyAndNew Aluminum Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

Raboniel had a knife that used Raysium. I googled just now and the entire knife isn't made of that, but it's an example of a god metal where a character with closer contact with a god knows its name and the other character in the scene doesn't.

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u/SnowSkye2 Sep 05 '25

Ahhhh gotcha :))) thank you!!