A gnome (
Paracelsus's gnome is recognized to have derived from the German miners' legend about or , the "metallurgical or mineralogical demon", according to Georg Agricola (1530), also called <!--nominative case appears to be -unculus --> (literal Latinization of Bergmännlein "mountain manikin") by Agricola in a later work (1549), and described by other names such as (sing. ; Latinization of German ). Agricola recorded that according to the legends of that profession, these mining spirits acted as miming and laughing pranksters who sometimes threw pebbles at miners, but could also reward them by depositing a rich vein of silver ore.
Paracelsus also called his gnomes occasionally by these names (Bergmännlein, etc.) in the German publications of his work (1567). Paracelsus claimed gnomes measured 2 spans (18 inches) in height, whereas Agricola had them to be 3 ' (3 spans, 27 inches) tall.
The name of the element cobalt descends from , a 16th century German miners' term for unwanted ore (cobalt-zinc ore, or possibly the noxious cobaltite and smaltite), related as mischief perpetrated by the gnome Kobel (cf. ). This Kobel is a synonym of Bergmännlein,
Etymology
The word comes from Renaissance Latin , (pl.