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Why don't amino acids end with the suffix aminoic ?


VultureV1

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Take glycine as an example (because I can remember it's structure without looking it up)

It's generally called aminoethanoic acid.

If you wanted to call it (something)ethylamine what would you put in the brackets there?

But, essentially, it's just convention.

Is putting amino in the prefix rather than in the suffix a convention only for amino acids or even compounds ?

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Conventions in nomenclature mean that certain functional groups take priority over others. We use that system to keep things consistent. If you have a molecule with two or more functional groups, such as a carboxylic acid and an amine, the group with the highest priority (the carboxylic acid in this case) becomes the parent functional group and is the one that ends up as the suffix.

 

This is a good list of priorities, for future reference: http://www.laney.edu/wp/abraham-reyes/files/2011/09/Priority-of-functional-groups.pdf

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