 Due to the leveling effect, except when highly concentrated and behavior deviates from ideality, "hydrochloric acid" (aqueous HCl) is only as acidic as the strongest proton donor available in water, the aquated proton (popularly known as "hydronium ion").When chloride salts such as NaCl are added to aqueous HCl, they have only a minor effect on pH, indicating that Cl− is a very weak conjugate base and that HCl is fully dissociated in aqueous solution.Dilute solutions of HCl have a pH close to that predicted by assuming full dissociation into hydrated H+ and Cl−.