Nomenclature

Three separate, parallel systems exist for naming alcohols, phenols and ethers, and each is developed in its own sub-section below. Common (trivial) names, the oldest system, name a compound after the alkyl or aryl group it is built from, plus a class word (-alcohol, -ether) or an accepted historical name (phenol, cresol, resorcinol); these names are often shorter and more familiar but do not extend cleanly to complicated structures. The carbinol system, used only for alcohols, instead treats every alcohol as a substituted derivative of methyl alcohol (renamed 'carbinol' for this purpose), with the attached alkyl group(s) cited alphabetically as a prefix before the word carbinol. The IUPAC (systematic) name, finally, is built by a fixed, unambiguous, worldwide set of rules: alcohols are named as alkanols (the parent hydrocarbon's '-e' ending replaced by '-ol', with locants and di-/tri- prefixes for polyols); phenols are named as substituted benzenols (though the retained name 'phenol' is itself IUPAC-accepted) with numerical loc …