General Chemistry at Penn State: Tutorials

The official names of organic compounds are build of three parts:

Prefix--Parent--Suffix

The prefix describes what the substituents are, and where are they located. The parent names the longest carbon chain in the compound. The suffix describes what family (functional group) the compounds belongs to.

Here is a table of useful names for parents and substituents:

No of carbons	parent name	parent alkane	substituent name
1	meth	methane	methyl
2	eth	ethane	ethyl
3	prop	propane	propyl
4	but	butane	butyl
5	pent	pentane	pentyl
6	hex	hexane	hexyl
7	hept	heptane	heptyl
8	oct	octane	octyl
9	non	nonane	nonyl
10	dec	decane	decyl

Organic compounds containing other functional groups are named based on the same principles, with each group having its characteristic name. A very small selection of these names is shown in a table below, together with some commonly used names.

Functional group	Group suffix	Example	Common name
alkenes	-ene	ethene	ethylene
alkynes	-yne	ethyne	acetylene
alcohols	-ol (replacing "e" in alkane name)	ethanol	ethyl alcohol
ethers	(alkyl alkyl) ether (alkyl names as in substituent names)	diethyl ether	ether
amines	-amine (added to the substituent name)	dimethylamine	--
aldehydes	-al (replacing "e" in alkane name)	methanal	formaldehyde
ketones	-one (replacing "e" in alkane name)	2-propanone	acetone
carboxylic acids	-oic acid (replacing "e" in alkane name)	ethanoic acid	acetic acid
esters	alkyl -ate (where "ate" replaces "oic" in the acid name)	ethyl ethanate	ethyl acetate
amides	amide (where "amide" replaces "oic" in the acid name)	hexanamide	--