Well, it's a bit selfish really. It's a terribly interesting outcome as it is, but the particle physicists in the 70's and 80's got to have all the fun.
"I'll call it 'Aluminum.' No, wait! 'Aluminium!' Uh... ship that first print run of my book with the wrong spelling to North America. Nobody will notice!"
"I'll call it Potassium, because it's found in potash." "That's not very creative." "Fine, I'll call it Kalium and give it a symbol of K." "Where'd you get Kalium from?" "Well, it's very alkaline, you see. It's from potash, after all." "That's still not very creative!" "Fine. We'll call it Potassium, but give it a symbol of K. Happy now?"
And those are also mostly the countries using Kalium: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/kalium
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A6%E...