272 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 510 



SCIENCE: 



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THE SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION OF CHEMICAL 

 TERMS. 



BY THOMAS H. ITORTON, PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, UNTVERSITT OF 

 CINCINNATI. 



The necessity of establishing standards with reference to the 

 nomenclatures of the different provinces of science has been felt 

 for several years past, with more or less force, according to the 

 branch concerned. In geography our own government has taken 

 a most desirable initiative by issuing authorized lists of geographi- 

 cal names, the spellings of which have been the result of careful 

 study and adherence to a few fixed general rules. Much has been 

 done of late towards the establishment of a uniform nomenclature 

 in geology, while the botanists assembled in an international con- 

 gress this fall to grapple with their phase of the problem. In 

 medicine the necessity of standards for uniformity in pronuncia- 

 tion is felt most keenly, but no decisive steps have been taken. 

 It is by no means uncommon for students in a medical or phar- 

 maceutical college to hear widely divergent pronunciations on the 

 part of the corps of instructors. 



The existence of these diversities, not only in medicine but also 

 throughout the whole range of the sciences, is due chiefly to two 

 causes. The first is the radical change which has taken place in 

 the pronunciation of the classical tongues during the past quarter 

 of a century, and which has naturally exerted a powerful in- 

 fluence on the pronunciation of naturalized Greek and Latin 

 terms as well as of most derivatives from these languages. The 

 second cause is to be found in the effects of Continental — i.e., 

 French and German — usage on the constantly-growing contingent 

 of American scientific and professional men who have studied in 

 European universities. Involuntarily they often retain the Con- 

 tinental pronunciation of the vowels — especially i,-in a less de- 

 gree a and e, and still less o and u — in the use of words of iden- 

 tical or similar spelling. When this happens in the case of 

 instructors, their usage is of course widely imitated. 



Among our chemists, the need of adopting standards has been 

 felt chiefly in the following directions. 



1. The rapid extension of organic chemistry has led to the dis- 

 covery of a notable array of new classes of compounds, whose 

 existence was totally unforeseen and for whose naming, naturally, 

 no provision was made, when about thirty years ago our other- 

 wise admirable system of nomenclature was introduced by Hof- 

 mann and his contemporaries. This problem is, of course, one 

 essentially international in its nature, and is now fortunately in a 

 fair way to be solved. At the Chemical Congress, held in con- 

 nection with the Pans exposition of 1889, an able committee was 

 appointed to carefully formulate the questions needing decision, 

 and make suggestions as to their treatment. As the complement 

 of their work a congress of representative chemists was held 

 during the past summer at Geneva, that favorite meeting-place of 

 international conferences, and the great majority of the questions 

 were settled in a series of sixty-two rules adopted with practical 

 unanimity. Time limitations prevented the completion of the 



work, which is postponed to an adjourned session. It is im- 

 possible here to go into detail upon the important results of this 

 congress. Suffice it to say that it has, with reasonable simplicity 

 and deference to existent usage, provided a nomenclature which 

 will meet the needs of chemists for probably 20 or 30 years. The 

 chemist's language is not unlike that of the Turk, in which 

 growth and change occur so rapidly that each new generation re- 

 quires a totally revised and modernized edition of standard works 

 in order to render them fairly intelligible to the reading public. 



2. A settlement of the claims of priority in the case of the 

 names of two elements, Columbium (or Niobium) and Glucinum 

 (or Beryllium), seemed eminently desirable. 



3. Equally important seemed to be the adhesion to several de- 

 cisions on minor questions in terminology, such as that of the 

 alcohols, the use of -ie, etc., already adopted by the London Chem- 

 ical Society. 



4. A subject of prime importance was the adoption of some 

 fixed spelling and pronunciation for certain terminations, notably 

 -171 and -ine, -id and -ide, which would effectually banish the 

 present lack of uniformity and adherence to the ordinary laws 

 governing word-building and pronunciation in our language. 



5. It seemed also proper to ascertain how far the chemist can 

 go in adopting the simpler forms of spelling advocated by the 

 Philological Societies of Great Britain and America, availing him- 

 self of the resultant economy and keeping in touch with the evi- 

 dent steady progress of phonetic reform in the English language. 



For the purpose of obtaining a consensus of opinion and ultimate 

 decision on the part of American chemists with reference to the 

 four latter topics, the Chemical Section of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science appointed in 1887 a special 

 committee, which later, on account of the importance of the 

 subject, was made one of the standing committees of the Associa- 

 tion. Since that time the members of the committee have been 

 in active correspondence with the entire body of American chem- 

 ists and leading philologists, by means of annual circulars and 

 individual communications, while at the successive meetings of 

 the association the subject has been a regular topic for discus- 

 sion. The final report, embodying the results of these few years of 

 work, and approved unanimously by the Chemical Section of the 

 Association, has recently appeared in print and been widely dis- 

 seminated. 



The importance of obtaining uniform usage in the application 

 of these rules has been so fully recognized that the Bureau of 

 Education at Washington is issuing an edition in the form of a 

 small wall-chart, to be distributed to high-schools and colleges, 

 which can thus keep the authority constantly in view in lecture- 

 room and laboratory. 



It might be added that the chemical nomenclature of one of the 

 largest dictionaries in our language, now in course of preparation, 

 is based upon this simple code, which has likewise been adopted 

 by the influential Journal of Analytical and Applied Chemistry^ 

 and also used by Dr. T. Sterry Hunt in his latest work upon 

 " Systematic Mineralogy," and in Professor R. A. Witthaus's re- 

 cent " Manual of Chemistry." Since the appearance in print of 

 this synopsis of rules, the writer and other members of the com- 

 mittee have received frequent inquiries with regard to the exact 

 reasons underlying one or another of the individual changes 

 recommended. These inquiries have pome from those who have 

 lacked the opportunity to keep au courant with the progress of 

 the discussion ami the final decisions. ' It may, therefore, meet a 



1 This lack of general information on the subject and familiarity with th& 

 careful, cautious and conservative spirit in which all suggestions of change 

 have been made, is well illustrated in a recent communication to this journal 

 (p. 247). In this the writer, having encountered sulfate demands why phenol- 

 phtalein does not al&o undergo change, and then seeks to '• picture our labor- 

 ing scientists, with the new-system dictionary before them, ever fearful of 

 beginning one word with an F after the new, and the next with a Ph after 

 the old system." He is evidently unconscious of the one fact that the sim- 

 plified spelling of sulfur and its derivatives, while bringing us into touch with 

 the elementary principles of phonetic reform in our own language has much 

 broader claims on us because it so manifestly aids all users of dictionaries 

 and indexes in English, French, German and Italian. He likewise overlooks 

 the fact that for the same reason the Ph of phosphorus remains intact be- 

 cause Italian is thus far the only language in which the digraph has been 

 superseded by the simple F, and because the change in the initial letter of a 

 word would lead to difficulties in the matter of reference, undesirable at 

 present. 



