BY Team Aakash Byjus

The Basic Rules of Nomenclature for Organic Compounds

The naming method of organic chemical compounds as recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is called the ‘IUPAC Nomenclature’.

Chemists followed the following rules in naming the organic chemical compounds:

The longest carbon chain was identified and considered the Parent chain.

All the groups appending from the parent groups were identified as Substituents.

 For example, if the carbon atom is 1 then the root word is meth.

The root word was decided based on the number of carbon atoms in compounds.

Refer to the table for the number of carbon atoms and the root word:

Figure out the suffix depending on the functional group present in the compound. For example, if the functional group is alkane (C-H) then add the suffix as  -ane’.

If the functional group is alcohol (-OH), then the suffix should be ‘-ol’. Similarly, alkynes, aldehydes, amines, etc, have different suffixes.

The numbering of carbon was done from one end of the parent chain in such a way that the side groups/atoms/molecules are found first compared to another end of the parent chain.

The side group is identified and named along with our chemical compound. For example, see the structure and naming of  4-bromomethyl heptane.

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