Naming Primary Amides

Before going over the principles of naming amides, recall that there are primary, secondary, and tertiary amides.

Amides are derivatives of carboxylic acids, and if you have already read about the nomenclature of carboxylic acids, you are familiar with the suffixes -ic acid, -oic acid. Now, for primary amides, all you need to do is replace the -ic acid, or -oic acid ending with the suffix “amide”.

For example:

All the substituents are numbered by starting from the amide carbon (unless a higher priority group is present) and placed alphabetically, just like for naming any other functional group:

When the amide group is connected to a ring, the suffix “carboxylic acid” is replaced with “carboxamide”:

Notice that the amide carbon, in this case, is not counted as part of the parent chain.

Naming Secondary and Tertiary Amides

Secondary and tertiary amides bear alkyl group(s) on the nitrogen, and just like other substituents, these are placed at the beginning of the name. However, these alkyl groups are also specifically indicated with the letter “N ”.

For example, N-methyl, N-ethyl, or N-ethyl, N-propyl if two alkyl groups are connected:

Below are some practice examples for naming different derivatives of carboxylic acids, including amides.