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Etymology of saturation degrees (-ane, -ene, -yne) in aliphatic compounds

Connor Becz  Follow

August Wilhelm Hofmann, of rearrangement and elimination fame, suggested the hydrocarbon systematic suffixes in 1866.

http://chem125-oyc.webspace.yale.edu/125/history99/5Valence/Nomenclature/alkanenames.html

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1745823414Y.0000000006

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Ian T. Smyth  Follow
You should try to avoid answers that are mostly link-only. Usually, you want to give a little more detailed a summary of the links, especially in cases where they arent accessible or may not be in the future.More
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Jack A. Underhill  Follow
The question was answered. One should be careful about "paraphrasing" others work. The author of the site is extremely knowledgable.More
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Greg Burns  Follow
I find the linked article (2nd link) a very useful complementation to the answer of Tyberius.More
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Douglas Krug  Follow
Fair enough. Use caution.More
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Erica Orchard  Follow
But I would argue it doesnt necessarily answer the question. Without going into why he chose those suffixes, it doesnt really inform why Hoffman didnt choose any other possible notation for the suffixes. I would also say we cant really avoid paraphrasing in science. Almost every scientific article I have read has had some citation of prior work that requires summarizing that work and its implications. You definitely still have to cite your reference in some way, but just pointing to a reference on its own usually isnt enough.More
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Brad Moffat  Follow

I found the following information through a website linked to Yale University.

The naming structure seems to have evolved from some of the early nonsystematic names given to hydrocarbons. It started with Dumas who in 1835 came up with the name Methylene for the $\ce{CH2}$ radical. The "-ene" suffix is a Greek feminine patronymic which was used to denote that Methylene was the "daughter of" (derived from) the "spirit of wood" or what we now call methanol (Dumas believed methanol had the formula $\ce{CH2\cdot H2O}$).

The naming structure caught on for ethylene since it was related to ethyl(even though the meth- in Methylene came from a Greek work for wine and not the numerical prefix used in methyl).

When the use of these feminine patronymics (-ene, -ine, -one) became common during the 1860s, Hoffman proposed making a consistent nomenclature that followed the standard progression of vowels: a e i o u. This led to the suffixes -ane, -ene, -ine(-yne), -one, and -une to refer to increasingly unsaturated hydrocarbons.

Since -one was already in use for ketone structures, only the first three suffixes caught on.

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Gerald Januszewski  Follow
The Origins of Chemical NamesMore
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Geoffrey Roberts  Follow
This answer probably gets pretty close to the truth (+1). A small comment. The word More
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Haroon Lakho  Follow
) was probaby co-coined by Dumas and Péligot ($\to$DP) in 1834. As you note, *-ene* is from Greek; however, the interpretation is a bit debatable (imo). DP believed that methylene formed the essential radical of methanol (or wood spirit). It would make more sense for wood spirit to be the daugther than the other way round. In Floods reference: *-ene* ... is a name-forming suffix; it has no real meaning in itself. $|$ ref: W. A. Flood, 1963, More
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Emile de Groot  Follow
methylèneMore
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Joseph Cotruvo  Follow
methyleneMore
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