Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index  Systematic
name  There are millions of possible objects that can be
described in science, too many to create common names for every
one. As a response, a number of systems of systematic names have
been created.  These can be as simple as assigning a prefix and
a number to each object (in which case they are a sort of
catalog reference), or as complex as encoding the complete
structure of the object in the name. Many systems combine some
information about the named object with an extra sequence number
to make it into a unique identifier.  Systematic names often co-
exist with earlier common names assigned before the creation of
any systematic naming system. For example, many common chemicals
are still referred to by their common names, even by chemists.
Table of contents 1 Chemical Names 2 External Links  Chemical
Names  To give an example of why this is so, consider this
example. The names "caffeine" and
"3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione" both