The George Molecule

My undergraduate organic instructor and research mentor loved the nonstandard names given for organic molecules, including George, Housane, Pagodane, etc.  They bring a little whimsy into the subject.  In those days common nomenclature was the primary type of naming used in the course.  In the intervening decades IUPAC nomenclature appears to have taken the drivers seat in most texts.

This semester I have been teaching for the first time from the organic text by Jones and Fleming.  While the students really like the writing style, I have found that the use of common nomenclature is driving me to distraction.  IUPAC nomenclature is brought in, but common nomenclature is used the vast majority of the time.  One bit of irony for me is that the authors write about "bling" in talking about diamond, but still use amyl and appear to think that the name ethylene is IUPAC nomenclature.

While common nomenclature is necessary as it is still used, systematic nomenclature offers the opportunity to train the student's mind to build a body of rules that can be applied to systems they have yet to see.  It fits well into the idea of building the capability to predicting the products of reactions between reagents one has never seen.

One problem in the use of IUPAC nomenclature in text is that most of us don't know all the basic rules, so many text include errors in their IUPAC naming.  Taking a page from days gone by when there were texts on organic nomenclature, perhaps we need a primer on IUPAC nomenclature for organic faculty.  Something like a Oxford primer soft cover book.

T.S. Hall