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alkane nomenclature priority help?

So I know this compound is called 2-chloro-3-methyl hexane, but the part that I do not understand is that if the alkane group takes priority over the alkyl halide (the chloro) and is therefore the suffix- shouldn't we be able to number from right to left instead of left to right?

So basically what I dont get is, for these priority rules does that means whatever functional group is higher priority that will be the suffix. And does this include numbering the carbon chain- for example if the methyl takes priority over the halo alkane group do we start numbering from the methyl group first?nomenclature.png
(edited 2 years ago)
I don't think that whether you start from left to right or vice versa matters, what matters is that you need to name your functional groups with the lowest number of carbon atoms on the compound. In terms of priority, I'm not really sure but from what I have seen, it is always the methyl, ethyl etc. groups that are named right before the name of the longest carbon chain compound, such as 2-iodo-3-methylbutane, rather than 3-methyl-2-iodobutane. Also there is no suffix in 2-chloro-3-methylhexane as there are no other functional groups such as an alcohol, if an alcohol group was present as well in 2-chloro-3-methylhexane, then the new name would be 2-chloro-3-methylhexan-1-ol, the suffix '-1-ol' indicates that the alcohol group is on the first carbon of hexane. From what I know for my A-Level syllabus, there are no suffix names for halogen group or for alkyl groups etc. Hence I think that's why they are always put in front of the name of the organic compound, whereas there are both prefix and suffix names for the alcohol group, therefore in this case we need to name the compound using the alcohol's suffix name as the chloro group does not have a suffix name.
(edited 2 years ago)

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