Serious question. They all have very outrageous, strange names and I’m positive they mean something, but where do those names come from?? Someone has to know!
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Like the drug names themselves like Skyrizi or Zoloft? They’re dreamt up by whole marketing teams at the drug companies. They work to find a catchy, unique name that sometimes relates to the actual drug compound name (like acetaminophen or sertraline) or sometimes the just sound good.
Probably from root words of their key ingredient compounds- kind of like mixing root words from the periodic table, or mixing medical root words that describe how the medicine works
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It’s all marketing and advertising. The names need to sound pleasing or exotic, be memorable, and be unique enough to trademark.
In short: they’re just made up, pure and simple.
They try to allude to the underlying chemistry while also complying with rules that try to limit confusion with similar-sounding names. https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/drug-name-confusion-fda-regulations-and-pharma-create-bizarre-new-names.html
Brand names come from marketing.
Generic names (chemical drug names) come from a naming system.
The end of a drug (generally speaking) is a bit like a last name. It tells you what family it comes from.
So, your friend Bobby Smith comes from the “Smith” family. In olden days, this meant he was a blacksmith- so not only does his last name tell you what family he’s from, but what his family “do”.
So, to use this example loosely, a drug name ending in “-pril” is from the family of ACE inhibitors- they lower blood pressure in a special way.
So, if you have a drug ending in “-pril” e.g. ramipril, enalapril, fosinopril…we know they’re from the “-pril” family, and work as an Ace inhibitor to lower blood pressure.
Other loose examples:
“-sartan” — Angio retensin II blockers- also lower blood pressure, but in a different way to the “-pril” family. E.g. Candesartan.
“-statin”– lowers cholesterol. E.g Simvastatin.
This is just a basic rundown using drugs from Australia so i hope this helps.
In the west, every drug is given two names: a generic name, and a brand name. The generic name is a name that you use for it regardless who makes it, and that has a part at the beginning that’s made up but usually a play on words for whatever it does — the ending is usually something that comes from a list of endings that tell you what kind of medicine it is (like -mab for “monoclonal antibody”). The brand name is typically shorter, unique, doesn’t sound like another drug, and usually has a play on words to add something related to what it is for. They consider all sorts of things for brand names, like “does it sound like a dirty word in the countries where we’ll sell it” and “is the name close to another drug name; we don’t want them to get confused”. Naming is hard because there’s lots of drugs.
A generic name would be “coffee”, and a brand name would be “Maxwell House”.
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