We discuss the origins of names in organic chemistry, starting the with chaos when Lavoisier and friends didn't create such a terminology in the 1780s. August Hofmann, in the 1860s, began to systematize things for his students, but it didn't take hold. Charles Friedel, though, got an International Congress of Chemistry in 1889 to consider the problem, which created an 1892 Geneva Nomenclature Congress. Finally some sense began to creep into organic nomenclature, and this eventually led to IUPAC after World War I. 

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