Many organic compounds have common names which have arisen historically, or have been given to them when the compound has been isolated from a natural product of first synthesised.
As there are so many organic compounds chemists have developed rules for naming a compound systematically, so that its structure can be deduced from its name.
This section introduces you to this systematic nomenclature, and to ways the structure of organic compounds can be depicted more simply than by full Lewis structures.
The language is based on Latin, Greek and German in addition to English, so a classical education is beneficial for chemists!