Befure tungsten became tungsten, it was called wolfram on the periodic table. They are both the same thing but the Scientific Community led by the USA decided to officially rename it to tungsten. Wolfram comes from the ore wolframite, which coincidentally is also the name of the ore tungsten comes from.
updated: Tue Feb 27 17:21:18 CST 2001
i apologize to bigmouth strikes for assuming that the
rest of the world's scientists had standardized on tungsten. rather there is plenty of strife amongst scientists, especially between the United States and Russia regarding the naming of new elements on the scientific table. they have been arguing for 15 years about what to name elements 101 and up... leave it to scientists to be irrational. :)