The Etymology of Chemical Names

Tradition and Convenience vs. Rationality in Chemical Nomenclature

Alexander Senning

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110611243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Chemistry
• Index: Chemistry

Etymology of Chemical Names gives an overview of the development of the current chemical nomenclature, tracing its sources and changing rules as chemistry progressed over the years. This book is devoted to provide a coherent picture how the trivial and systematic names shall be used and how the current IUPAC rules help to reconcile the conflicting demands.

1 Introduction

Both the occasional and the heavy user of chemical nomenclature will at times be baffled to find ambiguous names for a given compound, such as a trivial and a systematic name, or several systematic names, coined over time after changing rules. While an encyclopedia-style compilation of chemical etymological lore is available elsewhere [1] the present book is devoted to providing a coherent picture of how the trivial and systematic names in current use developed over time and especially how a series of conflicting demands had to be reconciled during the creation of the current IUPAC rules in order to make them practically useful.

Chapter 2 discusses the etymology of trivial names, both obsolete ones and those in current use, organized by the method used to coin the names.

Chapters 3 to 5 deal with the development of systematic nomenclature, again with strong emphasis on the etymology of the parent names and affixes used as building blocks. The simple question of whether two different names refer to the same substance or not can be vexing at times and this book should help to demystify the plethora of names connected with the multimillions of chemical substances on record. Chemical names can be more or less specific with regard to connectivity and geometry and both kinds play their own legitimate role, depending on the context in which the substance is to be discussed. Problems and solutions are presented here concerning the optimization of specificity. It is, however, not the intention to provide a crash course in the construction of IUPAC or CAS names. The instructions needed to generate correct systematic names are to be found in the current corresponding official rule books [2, 3, 4].

Chapters 6 through 11 are concerned with the special types of nomenclature which have been designed to create names for the elements and several classes of natural products. Also here etymological analysis helps to grasp the principles which have been applied. The development of the Periodic Table is considered in Chapter 6.

Chapter 12 deals with chemical terminology applied to concepts such as named rules and reactions.

In Chapter 13 the naming of minerals is considered together with the annotation of their composition by empirical formulas.

The INN concept for the naming of drugs is dealt with in Chapter 14 while ISO Common Names for Pesticides and Agrochemicals are the subject of Chapter 15.

Finally, common initialisms and acronyms, for chemical substances more often than not based on obsolete systematic names, are discussed in Chapter 16.

Chapter 17 provides an etymological analysis of chemical terms other than element or compound names while Chapter 18 lists miscellaneous prefixes and suffixes used in scientific terms.

Chapters 19 and 20 show examples of names with no or with disputed etymology.

Source languages appearing in this text are listed in the Source Language Index.

This book mentions many historical facts of relevance to chemical nomenclature. However, it is not a textbook of the history of chemistry. Much more on the history of alchemy and chemistry can be found in online sources [5,6] and in reference books [7,8].

References

[1]A. Senning, Elsevier’s Dictionary of Chemoetymology, Elsevier, Amsterdam etc., 2007, ISBN 978-0-444-52239-9 and literature cited there. →

[2]‘The Blue Book’, H. A. Favre and W. H. Powell, Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry – IUPAC Recommendations and Preferred Names 2013, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK, 2013, ISBN 978-0-85404-182-4. Extensive lists with corrections of misprints and errors are available as www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/iupac/bibliog/BBerrors.html (retrieved March 14, 2019) and www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/iupac/bibliog/BBminor.html (retrieved March 14, 2019). →

[3]‘The Red Book’, N. G. Connelly, T. Damhus, R. M. Hartshorn, and A. T. Hutton, Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry – IUPAC Recommendations 2005, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK, 2005, ISBN 0-85404-438-8; free online version, https://www.iupac.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Red_Book_2005.pdf (retrieved August 2, 2018). Lists with corrections of misprints and errors are available as http://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/iupac/bibliog/RBcorrect.html (retrieved March 14, 2019) and http://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/iupac/bibliog/RBcorrect2.html (retrieved March 14, 2019). G.P. Moss, Brief Guide to the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry, IUPAC Technical Report, https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbcs/iupac/BriefGuide/inorganic.html (retrieved March 22, 2019). →

[4]Naming and Indexing of Chemical Substances for Chemical Abstracts, 2007 Edition, American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, USA, 2008. →

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry (retrieved August 2, 2018). →

[6]http://www.rudolf-werner-soukup.at/Publikationen/Dolumente/Lexikon_der_Natutstoffchemie3_neu.pdf →

[7]W. E. Flood, The Origins of Chemical Names, Oldbourne, London, UK, 1963. →

[8]J. S. Fruton, A Bio-bibliography for the History of the Biochemical Sciences since 1800, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1982, ISBN 0-87169-983-4. →

2 Samples of trivial and semitrivial names

A trivial name is a name which does not or only to a limited degree convey information about the structure of the substance in question, with IUPAC’s words ‘a name having no part used in a systematic sense’. Obviously, only such names could be coined until the development of chemical science provided more and more insight into the exact structures of an ever-increasing multitude of chemical compounds.

A semitrivial name does provide some, but not exhaustive structural information.

Without access to structural information something else had to be relied on to coin these trivial names such as where the compound was first observed or a characteristic, readily observable property.

An extreme case of confusing trivial names was created when two structurally unrelated natural products from the same source were called scopolin and scopoline, respectively. Cf. Section 2.1.

Chapters 7 through 11 deal with important classes of natural products and their nam...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• References
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Samples of trivial and semitrivial names
• 3 Rudimentary systematic nomenclature
• 4 The IUPAC systematic nomenclature
• 5 The Chemical Abstracts systematic nomenclature
• 6 The naming of the elements
• 7 The naming of lipids and lipid constituents
• 8 The naming of terpenes
• 9 The naming of carbohydrates
• 10 The naming of amino acids, oligo- and polypeptides
• 11 The naming of other natural products
• 12 Named reactions and named concepts
• 13 The naming of minerals
• 14 International non-proprietary names for drugs and excipients
• 15 ISO common names for pesticides and other agrochemicals
• 16 Initialisms and acronyms
• 17 The vocabulary of chemistry
• 18 A sampler of miscellaneous prefixes and suffixes occurring in scientific terms
• 19 Trivial chemical names with disputed etymology
• 20 Some chemical names without known etymology
• Source Language Index