Aldehyde Nomenclature: Methanal
Propionaldehyde
Methanal is a common name for the aldehyde formally known as formaldehyde. Its systematic name is methanal because it contains one carbon atom (meth-) and is an aldehyde (-anal). The IUPAC name of methanal is also formaldehyde according to the rules of systematic nomenclature.
The common name for formaldehyde, i.e., methanal, is derived from the outdated approach of using the suffix “-al” for aldehydes. As per this method, an aldehyde was named by adding the suffix “-al” to the name of the parent hydrocarbon. In the case of formaldehyde, the parent hydrocarbon is methane, and thus, it is named as methanal.
In the IUPAC system, aldehydes are named by replacing the suffix “-e” of the parent alkane with “-al.” Thus, formaldehyde is named as “methanal,” which follows the rules of the IUPAC nomenclature system.
In summary, methanal is a common name for formaldehyde, which follows the outdated method of nomenclature. The systematic name of the compound is methanal, and the IUPAC name of the compound is also formaldehyde.
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