Half of the prescription medications that doctors give are like double-barrelled and 10-syllables. Is there a specific reason for this? Is it a chemistry thing, or a safety thing so miscommunication is less likely?
In: Chemistry
Both. There is much more to medicine names than you imagine.
The active molecule (active substance) gets its name from several different rulesets. This happens very early in development and long before it is ready to be sold as a drug. This name is mainly to give the molecule a unique name that chemists, doctors, researchers and authorities can refer to and mean the same thing.
These names are often long and complex to a layman. But to the professionals they convey information about the molecule in some way. Depending on the type of molecule different naming schemes can be used. And sometimes (but rarely) there are several valid names in circulation even for a brand new molecule. There are both regional and global naming schemes, with a little bad luck the company can end up with more than one name for the molecule.
The brand name (aka the invented name) is created later, usually when the drug is about to be registered in the first market, usually USA or EU. The authority then reviews it and may reject it, the company proposes another name and they continue until the authority is happy. Rejection usually happens because there is another medicine name (either the chemical name or the invented name) which is too similar and may be confused with the new product. The procedure is repeated for the next market and the third market etc. (many smaller markets simply followed the EU or US name.) That means it is not uncommon for medicines to have different invented names in the EU and USA, and sometimes even a third and fourth name in some regions/countries.
For these names to work out as brand names and to avoid similarity they must be nonsense-words. And trust me, while they are gibberish there is nothing random about them. A handful of names are carefully selected by specialist consulting companies writing reports on hundreds of pages with testing results comparing the suggested names. The names are tested against doctors and nurses, how easy they are to hear over a noisy phone line, how they sound and feel to patient groups, how they work from marketing perspective and if they align with the company values or message. And of course from a branding/trademark perspective. Companies might try to sneak in a syllable or two that reminds you of eg movement in a rheumatism medicine. But it can’t be too obvious as that wouldn’t be allowed by the authority.
Of course, the names are trademarked even before the application to protect the value already spent on them. So there are thousands of trademarked medicine names that never came into use. But they can still be an obstacle to other names.
Usually the invented name is must printed with largest text on the package, it then usually must be followed by the chemical name in slightly smaller print. If the medicine contains two substances with long names, that can take up some serious space in the packaging.
And that’s why you see so many “random syllables” in drug names
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