Just as beef and cattle both refer to the same thing but for different purposes, we have minerals that take on different names when they're extra-pretty gemstones. Gemstone users and students of minerals speak different languages! So this freshly updated list of gemstone vs mineral names is here to serve as an interpreter. The most notable change is that I've linked many of the gemstone names to examples of jewelry that use them.
A few mineral/gemstones are no problem. Diamond is the same thing to the geologist and gemologist. So are apatite, malachite, opal, topaz, turquoise and zircon. (OK, that's not very many.) The reason is that the gemstones got their names first, usually in antiquity, while the minerals were named mostly in the last few centuries. That's when we established, for instance, that sapphire and ruby are both mineralogically corundum.
Malachite (mineral, not gemstone) — Wikimedia photo
Comments
Ah, Andrew, you’ve barely scratched the surface of the “semi-precious” market. (Admittedly, it often deals more with rocks than with minerals.) Did you know that you can buy gemmy serpentinite as “new jade”, “olive jade”, and “serpentine”? (At least the last is close to honest.) Pretty stuff, too, and priced properly — that is, inexpensively — if your supplier is honest. Then there’s “mountain jade” — high-grade dolostone. With a rise in the price of real turquoise, there’s a whole lot of dyed howlite and magnesite out there masquerading as the real thing. Knowing what gem-mineral translations should be is only the start of the game…
I SO agree with Karen! And I’ll add the fray: the various rocks and minerals being trade named “jasper” or “agate”, which really aren’t.
It’s a baffling case of semi-precious nicknames.
Like learning identification isn’t difficult enough…Argh!