Subsequent studies show the new gas recognized by Scheele, Priestley, and Rutherford to be a constituent of nitre, a common name for potassium nitrate (KNO₃).

Accordingly, the French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal names it nitrogen (from nitre and Greek gen, bearing or forming) in 1790.

Lavoisier, whose explanation of the role of oxygen—the “fire air”—in combustion, eventually overthrew the popular but erroneous phlogiston theory, considers nitrogen a chemical element, and names it azote, after what he deems its apparent inability to support life, and which today remains the French equivalent of nitrogen.