Ether Naming

[Jasmine_Esparza_2A]

I'm still somewhat confused on the ether naming. Is it possible if someone can give and complete an example?

[Chem_Mod]

Ethers are in the middle of two carbon chains. To name this ether, you would have to choose the shortest chain out of the two.

Check out this example from the link below, the first yellow highlighted section under "Intermediate ethers" :

http://www.chem.ucalgary.ca/courses/351 ... rs-01.html

we see that there are two carbon chains on either side of the oxygen. We pick the shortest one out of the two. It is either a three carbon link (propane) or a 1 carbon link (methane) thus we name it after methane.

This is treated as an alkoxy group,
so we take the prefix for methane, "meth-" and add the ether suffix "-oxy" to form methoxy.

Alkanes have a higher priority than ethers, so we are TREATING THE ETHER AS A SUBSTITUENT on the propane. The ether is the highest priority substituent attached to the propane, thus it will have the number 1.

So the full name would be
1-methoxypropane.

There are other good examples on this page as well, and on the internet.

hope this helps !

[Riley Seid 1L]

Does the ether group always appear first when naming? For instance on page 100 of the course reader, for 1-ethoxy-3-methylpentane, would we put the methyl first if it instead happened to be butyl, making it alphabetically first?

[Chem_Mod]

Yes, it would follow alphabetical rules