Organic chemistry/Organic naming

From Wikiversity

There are thousands of known organic compounds and millions of other yet to be discovered, because of the wide variety of compounds a a naming system was developed by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)^[1] to give a unique descriptive name to each compound. In this system the name of the compound directly describes it's structure through an elaborate system of suffixes and prefixes. Common names are used for compounds that were either around before IUPAC or who have a more widely known name other then the IUPAC. For example, trichloromethane is IUPAC name for chloroform, though it is almost universally referred to by students and scientists alike as chloroform.

The simplest systematic name is given to straight chain alkanes. An alkane is a compound containing solely hydrogen and carbon, and straight chain implies that there are no branches or rings in the structure. Alkanes start from the name of the prefix, drop the "yl" and add an "ane".

• 1C Methyl
• 2C Ethyl
• 3C Propyl
• 4C Butyl
• 5C Pentyl
• 6C Hexyl
• 7C Heptyl
• 8C Octyl
• 9C Nonyl
• 10C Decyl

[edit] References