Whats in a Name Organic Nomenclature

Systematic Names and Common Names Systematic names are derived according to a prescribed set of rules, common names are not. 

Many compounds are better known by common names than by their systematic names. 

Common names, despite their familiarity in certain cases, suffer serious limitations compared with systematic ones. The number of known compounds (millions ) already exceeds our capacity to give each one a unique common name, and most common names are difficult to connect directly to a structural formula. A systematic approach based on structure not only conveys structural information, but also generates a unique name for each structural variation. 

Evolution of the lUPAC Rules A single compound can have several acceptable systematic names but no two compounds can have the same name. 

During the twentieth century, what we now know as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (lUPAC) carried out major revisions and extensions of organic nomenclature culminating in the lUPAC Rules. The widely used 1979 and 1993 versions of these rules were joined in 2004 by an ambitious set of recommendations. Despite their sweeping scope, the 2004 recommendations do not render the 1979 and 1993 lUPAC rules obsolete. Rather, the three documents together comprise a col lection of systems that give the chemist wide latitude in choosing which of several acceptable ways to name a particular compound. 

As early as 1787 with the French publication of Methode de nomenclature chimique, chemists suggested guidelines for naming compounds according to chemical composition. Their proposals were more suited to inorganic compounds than 

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