Which element has the chemical symbol W?

Tungsten, and the W is from wolfram - the name used across most of Europe, from a German miners' term meaning roughly wolf's froth, because the ore devoured their tin during smelting like a wolf eating sheep. English took tungsten from Swedish for heavy stone. Two names for one metal, and the symbol follows the losing one.

It has the highest melting point of any metal at 3,422 degrees, which is why it was the filament in every incandescent bulb - a wire that can be run white hot for a thousand hours without vaporising. It is also nearly as dense as gold, which makes it the material of choice for counterfeiting gold bars, since a tungsten core plated in gold has almost exactly the right weight and heft.

The name argument had an official ending that satisfied nobody. IUPAC recognised wolfram as an acceptable name until 2005, when it dropped it - to the lasting irritation of Spanish and German chemists, who point out that the symbol is now the initial of a word the body has declared is not the element's name.