Nomenclature of Alcohols

Monohydric alcohols are named by three parallel systems. Common/trivial names are formed by adding the word 'alcohol' after the name of the alkyl group that is bonded to -OH (e.g. methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol), with higher/branched alkyl groups additionally taking prefixes such as normal (n-), iso, secondary (sec-) or tertiary (tert-) to specify their exact branching pattern (see Table 11.1). The carbinol system treats every alcohol as a substituted derivative of methyl alcohol, which is itself renamed 'carbinol' for this purpose: the alkyl group(s) actually attached to the carbinol carbon (the carbon bearing -OH) are named, in alphabetical order if there is more than one, as a prefix immediately before the word 'carbinol' -- so ethanol, whose carbinol carbon carries one extra methyl group beyond the -OH-bearing carbon itself, becomes 'methyl carbinol'. The IUPAC system names alcohols as alkanols: the terminal '-e' of the parent alkane, alkene or alkyne name is simply replaced by the suffix '-ol' (e.g. ethane becomes ethanol). For a polyhydric alcohol, the parent's '-e' ending is instead RETAINED and the multiplying prefix di-, tri-, etc. is inserted immediately before '-ol' to show how many -OH groups are present (e.g. ethane-1,2-diol for ethylene glycol), with the exact ring/chain position of every -OH group indicated by its own numerical locan …