text: Well  as Wikipedia mentions: "The term halogen was coined to mean elements which produce salt in union with a metal"\n\nIn Greek "alas" is salt\nand "genno" means to give birth to\n\nAs roots with latin characters they are spelled a bit differerently, so you have the "halo-" part for salt and -"gen" for giving birth to. \n\nSo halogens were named after their property to react with metals, producing salt, like oxygen was named after its property to produce acid  (oxos=acid) and hydrogen  (hydor=water) to produce water.\n\nThe first halogen to be discovered was chlorine, by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1774. However Scheele believed it was a compound containing oxygen and in 1810 Sir Humphry Davy proved that chlorine was actually an element. \nI don't know though, when and who exactly came up with the term "halogen".