Not the OP, but - in German and other similar languages, there is no equivalent to "carbon" as a term with a separate etymology. The word for carbon is "coalstuff" - it is the thing which coal is made out of. Similarly, oxygen is "acidstuff" - because it was originally believed to be the cause of chemical acidity.
If English had developed as other Germanic languages did, it would also use these kinds of terms for the elements, as well as in other parts of science, academia, and formal speech. Compound terms, which form a large part of common language (e.g. motor-way, hand-bag, table-cloth) would also be used in technical, political, and legal language.
Instead, the "high" part of English is derived from Latin and Greek. The English call it science, rather than "nature-wit-making", because of the use of Latin among early academics meant they already had the word "scientia" instead. Nobody felt the need to apply Germanic-style compounds in a realm where all the vocabulary already existed.
This results in two registers in modern English - that for words which are used in common speech, which are distinctly Germanic-sounding, and use lots of compounds; and that for words which come from academic, scientific, or political speech, which are Latin- and Greek-sounding, and largely lack compounds.
English speakers can mostly automatically use these registers to affect their communication: you can easily make something sound pompous with a lot of high-register Latin-based terminology, or alternatively make it sound plain and common with low-register Germanic compounds.