Preface
The explosive growth of chemical knowledge during the last decennia
has led to a sheer unbounded number of new and novel compounds
and compound classes whose rational naming has caused ever-increasing difficulties. Originally the naming of a new substance was left exclusively to the discretion of the discoverer, who frequently derived the
name directly from a sensory perception or even acted purely by intuition. As such more or less arbitrarily formed "trivial names" conveyed
nothing about the structure of the underlying compounds, no reasonable chemical correlations could be established with those names. As
a corollary of the deepening comprehension of structural relationships
in Organic Chemistry it eventually became unavoidable to develop
a binding systematic and universally applicable nomenclature framework permitting the encoding of essential constitutional information in
a compound name proper.
One of the main difficulties in realizing such a task is to be found
in the seemingly unresolvable conflict between the necessary rigidity
of a system of norms and a certain degree of flexibility required in its
application in teaching texts, handbooks, and secondary and primary
literature. As a matter of fact, however, this situation has improved considerably in recent times insofar as the master concepts for obtaining
rational, systematic compound names are now defined so precisely and
uniformly that they are generally applicable and extendable.
In view of an ever-growing number of new chemical compounds it
has become inevitable to adhere more and more to a stringently rational
nomenclature system based on easily comprehensible, preferably selfevident, maxims instead of perpetuating the multiplicity of traditional
naming procedures frequently overloaded with only vaguely justified
exceptions. Accordingly, these guidelines for the application of the basic
principles of systematic nomenclature emphasize above all fully systematic names corresponding to farthest reaching standardisation; this holds
even when the official recommendations of the IUPAC nomenclature
commissions have, an occasion, stopped half-way to their goal. Since in
practice it will be impossible to jettison, at least for some time, a large
The explosive growth of chemical knowledge during the last decennia
has led to a sheer unbounded number of new and novel compounds
and compound classes whose rational naming has caused ever-increasing difficulties. Originally the naming of a new substance was left exclusively to the discretion of the discoverer, who frequently derived the
name directly from a sensory perception or even acted purely by intuition. As such more or less arbitrarily formed "trivial names" conveyed
nothing about the structure of the underlying compounds, no reasonable chemical correlations could be established with those names. As
a corollary of the deepening comprehension of structural relationships
in Organic Chemistry it eventually became unavoidable to develop
a binding systematic and universally applicable nomenclature framework permitting the encoding of essential constitutional information in
a compound name proper.
One of the main difficulties in realizing such a task is to be found
in the seemingly unresolvable conflict between the necessary rigidity
of a system of norms and a certain degree of flexibility required in its
application in teaching texts, handbooks, and secondary and primary
literature. As a matter of fact, however, this situation has improved considerably in recent times insofar as the master concepts for obtaining
rational, systematic compound names are now defined so precisely and
uniformly that they are generally applicable and extendable.
In view of an ever-growing number of new chemical compounds it
has become inevitable to adhere more and more to a stringently rational
nomenclature system based on easily comprehensible, preferably selfevident, maxims instead of perpetuating the multiplicity of traditional
naming procedures frequently overloaded with only vaguely justified
exceptions. Accordingly, these guidelines for the application of the basic
principles of systematic nomenclature emphasize above all fully systematic names corresponding to farthest reaching standardisation; this holds
even when the official recommendations of the IUPAC nomenclature
commissions have, an occasion, stopped half-way to their goal. Since in
practice it will be impossible to jettison, at least for some time, a large