kwaw
For myself, I don't worry about elements. I ignore them. I still arrive at standard meanings for the suits by looking at the suit objects. For Wands, I picture wooden planks used to build a house. For Cups, food and drink as a means of sharing. For Swords, conflict and strategies. For Coins, value systems. I may be wrong about this but I doubt very much that people in the 15th through 19th centuries thought in terms of elements for the suits. I think that's a modern innovation, when esotericists began to look at the cards.
I agree the suit emblems themselves provide sufficient basis as per your examples -
OT: For anyone who may be interested however, the attribution of the four suits to other 'fours' is older than the speculations of modern esotericists - for example from Piscina Discorso, 1565: