Quote:
Originally Posted by kalee20
And whoever decided to rename carbon tetrachloride CCl4 as tetrachloromethane deserves to be shot - after all, we haven't renamed carbon dioxide CO2 as dioxymethane, have we? Or even oxymethanal or oxyformaldehyde? Which would be just as logical!
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I think you can put this at the door of the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists). Back in the sixties there was a drive to replace the "trivial" names of chemicals (e.g. carbon tetrachloride) with "systematic" names (tetrachloromethane). It is quite useful in the profession of chemistry, but does tend to irritate the occasional users. Would you believe that some years ago there was a madcap idea to change the names of the chemical elements to more "systematic" names. So, oxygen would become "octium" (element No 8) and hydrogen would become "unium" (element No 1). Water then gets renamed "octium di-uniide". You can imagine some of the other catastrophes that would be possible. I think it was intended as a measure to prevent the continual arguments over the naming of "new" synthetic elements. The idea eventually got dropped - hence "oganesson", the heaviest element so far.
I feel I have drifted off-topic, here....where did I put my coat?
Colin.