NOMENCLATURE

Eastman Kodak Gets in Line

An important step toward a uniform chemical nomenclature* has just been taken by "Eastman Organic Chemicals." This well known catalog, which now includes more than 3500 different compounds, will hereafter conform in general with the Chemical Abstracts system of naming. T h e C'.A. system in turn conforms with t h e decisions of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry ( IUPAC) as closely as is consistent with its indexing principles. Eastman List No. 38, pub­lished Sept. 15, is the first under the new plan . Λ\Τπ1ίΛ many of the names remain t h e same there are many changes that affect the alphabetic order ι over 100 in A alone) . As may be imagined, the change-oxer has been no slight job and, for a commercial catalog, no slight ven­tu re . The change will probably be wel­come in proportion as the user is familiar w i th the C.A. system, but the management reports that the response has been favor­able . After all, the C.A.-Il PAC system is no revolutionary one, but merely at­tempts to systematize ways of naming wh ich have "just growed." List No. 3<S

AUSTIN M. PATTERSON*

gives numerous cross references from the old names to the new, and is accompanied by an eight-page pamphlet which is a very good summary of the C.A. system ( a condensation of "The Naming and In­dexing of Chemical Compounds by Chemi­cal Abstracts" issued by the C.A. office ). In the few respects where the catalog list­ing does not adhere strictly to the C.A. procedure, the variation is shown in italics in the pamphlet. The most noticeable one is that the principle of inversion is not followed; that is, chlorobenzene is so en­tered rather than as ben/.ene, chloro- ( in­version, while ideal for indexing has not seemed practical for a price l is t ) .

Our congratulations go to J. T. Fuess, manager of Eastman Organic Chemicals Department [ Distillation Products Indus­tries, Rochester 3, Ν. Υ. ) and his helpers for their courage and industry in trans­forming the list. Mr. Fuess will be glad Λ) supply a copy of the pamphlet to any­one who will write in for it. He hopes that it will prove helpful to those who can't or won't read t he complete "Naming and Indexing," which is necessarily quite tech­nical. While the change will no doubt cause some inconvenience, especially to

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Chemical Nomenclature And Everyday Speech

K. A. Jensen of the University of Copen­hagen is a proponent of uniformity, so far as is possible, in the different languages. Me outlined his views in the paper "'Prob­lems of an International Chemical Nomen­clature," which he read in the symposium on nomenclature in Xew York in 1951. This paper has been published in Acta Chemica Scandincwica, 6, 73-90 ( 1 9 5 2 ) and will appear in Advances in Cliemis-try Series. He would go farther in this di­rection than many of us . He would use t h e Latin names for common elements instead of the national names (ferruni instead of iron, cuprum for copper, stannum for t in , e tc . ) . He opposes national phonet ic spell-» ings such as Zasium for cesium, torium for thorium, itrio for yttr ium, and kroni for chromium, and would like to consider a system of latinized chemical terms as analogous to the Lat in names of botanical species. These species names are indis-pensahle, but so also are t h e common names ol plants and animals.

The question seems to be whether our chemical language should move closer to a special, uniform, international termi­nology understood b y scientists only, or whether it should keep in touch with t he language of the people in each country . Professor Jensen favors etymological spell­ing as opposed to phonet ic spelling, b u t this is a debatable matter, wi th some strong arguments on the phonetic side. It seems to us that the difficulties of t ranslat­ing chemical names have been magnified. An American chemist, reading JtaLian, rather readily learns to recognize "e l io" as helium, "esaidro" as hexahydro, and even "esaossicicloesane" as he.\a( hyclr)-oxycyclohexane.

W e agree with t he Jensen suggestion that new chemical names be formed from Latin and Greek roots by as consistent a system as possible, bu t we must have a regard for common usage. The British, French, and Americans vetoed a proposal that "wolfram" replace " tungsten" be­cause the latter term is too well es tab­lished in general speech in our countr ies . The layman need not be alarmed. I t is unlikely, yes, unthinkable, tha t w e shall ever speak of a man of ferruni ne rve , or the light of the argentinny moon.

Phth! This forbidding set of consonants we

handle fairly easily in such words as naphthalene, hut when they begin a. word , as in phthalic, they can cause explosions. The dictionary permits the pronunciat ion "fthalic" but its first choice is " thal ic"; most of us follow this advice and do not sound the ph at all. The question has been raised, why not drop the p h in the spelling also? It is true that "thalie" and "thalate" would be good simplified spell-* ings, but their adoption would cause such shifts in indexing that objection would surely he raised.

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