Introduction

There are some 0.6 of a million known chemical substances. Of which an estimated .05 million are organic. These compounds are made up predominantly from 4 elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Originally the compunds were named by their discoverers with a series of unrelated names, making the study of the subject difficult. In recent years an effort has been made to enforce a systematic set of names for these compunds; that is governed by a set of rules.

Learning the rules takes some effort - but once you know them you can confidently name any compund. Without the rules you must learn half a million names.

Organic compunds are placed in groups of compounds that have similiar reactions and properties. These groups are called homologus series. "holologus" means "like truths"

The rules for naming organic compounds are relatively straight forward. Compounds names have two parts the prefix which tells you how many carbons can be found in the longest chain. The suffix tells you which homologus series the compound belongs to.

Root Names

The root name of an organic compound indicates the number of carbon atoms in the longest continuous chain of carbon atoms containing the highest priority functional group. The root name simply tells you the size of the molecule. Unfortunately, you must memorize the root names. For As course the first six names are essential.

IUPAC Root Names
Number of C atoms	Root Name
1	meth
2	eth
3	prop
4	but
5	pent
6	hex
7	hept
8	oct
9	non
10	dec
11	undec
12	dodec
13	tridec
14	tetradec
15	pentadec
16	hexadec
17	heptadec
18	octadec
19	nonadec
20	icos

The name for the compound will be the root name followed by a suffix, which indicates the highest priority functional group present.