Nomenclature

For non-science students that do not understand the title, nomenclature is simply a standard way of naming chemical compounds. I'm sorry if I'm posting too much sh*t about Chemistry nowadays, but face it, it's part of our lives.

A more accurate definition provided by dictionary.com defines the word "nomenclature" to be:

no‧men‧cla‧ture
–noun
1. a set or system of names or terms, as those used in a particular science or art, by an individual or community, etc.
2. the names or terms comprising a set or system.

Now that we're done with the technical bits, let me get on with THE IDEA.

As humans are getting less and less aware of their roots nowadays, and are drifting further apart, which is by the way one of my hypotheses without any supporting evidence whatsoever, we need AN IDENTITY and A STANDARD CLASSIFICATION. Following the Biology lectures on classification, taxonomy and phylogeny, the world needs to adopt STANDARD FORMATTING to make life easier for say, aliens if they want to classify us.

After all, you never know what lurks in outer space. What if one day we become extinct and a bunch of aliens from outer space wanted to find out our way of life and the different sorts of species that existed on this earth? And they might be disappointed if we don't have a classification system. For the sake of knowledge (of potential kaypoh aliens), let us just classify ourselves.

First, the obvious. Everyone has a name. The significance of having a name is to be unique, to be recognised by others. But people might have the same name and that might suck because misunderstandings might arise from there. With classification underlining his/her origins, we will reduce the margin of error.

Of course, coincidences still will happen. That is the way of the earth, coincidences will happen so to make life more exciting when you screw up.

The classification works to identify your roots (like in Chemistry, your functional group), your generation, your order (number of siblings, etc.)

And to integrate Chemistry into our world, the first generation (ie grandparents) need not have a prefix. They are, after all, grandparents and there isn't a need to name them (it's kinda rude too?). When people get old, they suffer from memory loss and can't remember long names. So we should omit prefixes for them, let them have fun memorising shorter names.

Parents will be given the prefix di-, to express that they are of the second generation. Then Generation Y (or the third generation) will be given the prefix tri-. I know this is unoriginal, but if we call ourselves X and Y as prefixes, that is so random and biologists might argue it because X-chromosomes + X will make females and Y-chromosomes + X will make males. (pardon the bad terming)

In any case, X- and Y- prefixes don't sound practical enough. They sound too gender-based. Hence, di- and tri- it is.

Then comes the order of the siblings. For purposes of alignment with Chemistry, boys have the suffix -ane and girls have the suffix -ene. Don't ask me what's it got to do with a single or double bond, a suffix is a suffix and this is just a totally random combination. You don't question why one C atom is meth- and two C atoms is eth- either, so boys are -ane and girls are -ene. That's that.

Following which, you assume that you are the n^th child of the family. Take the total number of children your parents have to be r. You are basically child n (okay what's the difference). Sometimes, the (r-1)^th term (child) of your family does not exist, and that's if you are a single child.

Assume you are a single child then. And you are male. Of the third generation, your given name is Tan Ah Beng. Then your full classified name would be - "Tri-methane Tan Ah Beng".

SHIT THAT SOUNDS SO DAMN COOL.

As you have guessed by now, the first child is prefixed (after the first prefix) meth-, second child eth-, third child prop- like the Chemistry naming series. For the benefit of those who doesn't know, the order goes from meth-, eth-, prop-, but-, pent-, hex- and I shall not go any further because seldom parents go beyond six nowadays. Assuming they even get anywhere near there.

Let's try something a little trickier. What if the person is the 4th child (out of 5) of the family, is a female, the third daughter in the family from the second generation, and likes eating cheesecakes and her given name is Sara Lee? (RJC should fricking set questions like this on nomenclature, it's very brain-twisting and very interesting as well.)

Her classified name: "Di-3-butene Sara Lee."

Then you'd know her family background. Next time introductions will be a little lengthier, but the conversation afterwards will be less corny because you wouldn't be asking stupid questions like "how many siblings do you have?" Takes away all that redundancy.

A possible failing of the system is that you do not know how many children the parent has. Because you might be the first child of two and you call yourself "methane" or "methene" (which doesn't exist chemically but these ARE humans so it exists) - and it doesn't say about younger siblings.

But hey, aren't younger siblings sometimes redundant?

..just kidding.

They are redundant ALL THE TIME.

..ya okay fine there are exceptions.

BUT STILL. If you come to think of it, no one really counts backwards from the last sibling to say, "oh you are the second-last daughter in your family" because it kind of doesn't make any sense. On wedding invites you don't see "my last son from bottom is getting married to his third-last daughter from bottom". Now that's really uncalled for.

Hence, there is a reason why we don't indicate number of children. After all with declining birth rates, let us have a bit of self denial and not mention anything. At the worst case, it gives you some room for conversational topics later after introduction. Like "hey do you have any younger siblings" and stuff. Yup oh well.

Now nomenclature has a whole new meaning. Of course like many other systems there are ways to further improve it, but I'm too lazy right now to think of it. Plus there's REAL Chemistry to mug for. If you've any suggestions, feel free to post them under "Comments". We still read them.

And now OH YEA.. there's a whole new meaning to "parent group" in Chemistry. I think I love this nomenclature shit, the term sounds so profound and the possibilities are endless.

Thus, START NAMING YOURSELF TODAY!

(You might want to put your new full name on your MSN nick.)