Nomenclature of Carbon Compounds
"Nomenclature is the system of assigning a proper name to a particular carbon compound on the basis of certain rules."
Most of the carbon compounds have two types of names:
• Trivial Names
• IUPAC Names
Trivial Names
The trivial names are the commonly used names of carbon compounds. They are derived mostly from the source of the compound e.g., the name of formic acid is derived from 'formicus' the Greek word meaning red ants. Names arrived in this way were ambiguous and repeating.
IUPAC Names
With the large growth of carbon compounds, it was necessary to name these compounds in a more systematic way. A committee called the 'International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry' (IUPAC) put forward a system of giving proper scientific names to carbon based compounds. The names derived by their rules are the names followed all over the world and in short are called IUPAC names.
