why is the periodic table symbol for sodium, Na ?

Many of them, like lead (Pb) are named after their latin roots.

Also, with lead, Pb stands for plumbumb, which is where we get the word “plumber” from, because they originally worked with lead and piping.

Read the first page of the wiki link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium

And this was a good question.. I am not snarking.

There should be a question category for questions that can be answered with a chimp, 3 minutes, and Google.

johnpowell: I AM snarking.

Sodium’s chemical symbol is Na for Nacium

Most elements on the periodic chart their symbols are based on either their Latin root words. That is how Dmitri Mendeleev organized it.