Now let's talk about naming ethers. So it turns out that ethers are very simple molecules. As you guys remember, the functional group is ROR. And what that means is that since they're very simplistic molecules, these are actually going to be a few molecules that we name with both common names and IUPAC names. Now if you guys remember, IUPAC names are the ones that were developed after 1919 at the IUPAC convention. That means every name that we have for a molecule before that date is considered a common name. And it turns out that because ethers are so simple, a lot of times we're going to use common names more often than the IUPAC names for them. So let's actually go ahead and start off learning the common way first and then I'll teach you guys the IUPAC way as well.
So it turns out that the common name, the reason we use it so much is because it's very easy to use. All it is is that you name the two R groups in alphabetical order and you end with the word ether. Okay? So, I'm sure you guys have maybe already started lab and you maybe have worked with an ether in lab. They have diethyl ether, dimethyl ether. That just means that the two R groups are either methyls or ethyls. In this case, this would be a methylpropyl ether because as you can see, I have an ROR functional group and I'm just naming the two alkyl groups according to their size. So I have one carbon and three carbons. That'll be methylpropyl ether. See how easy that is? So most of the time, we're going to use the common naming system for very simple ethers.