As a native English speaker, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call NaCl just “Sodium”, it’s always called “Sodium Chloride”.

I always said salt, of sodium chloride for NaCl. Who is using sodium for table salt? The only time I heard that associated was when saying that table salt is a source of sodium, which is true.

I’m a PhD candidate in chemistry. I’ve never once seen sodium refer to the salt, sodium chloride. Sodium is the metallic form or the atom.

However, why sodium, tungsten, lead, antimony, tin, silver, gold, mercury, iron, and potassium and not their Latin forms? Natrium, wolfram, plumbum, stibium, stannum, argentum, aurum, hydrargyrum, Ferrum and kalium? I don’t really know. Mostly it’s just fun trivia for me to tell the undergrads.