Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sigmaprimus 2428 days ago
Interesting thing I learned from a European nurse when my Dad was in the hospital: What is called "Acetaminophen" in North America is called "Paracetamol" in Europe. Anyone know why this is?
2 comments

> What is called "Acetaminophen" in North America is called "Paracetamol" in Europe

Not just in Europe, actually in most of the world. The international standard name (International Nonproprietary Name or INN approved by the WHO) is paracetamol. For some drugs, instead of using the international standard name, the United States uses its own alternate naming system, the United States Adopted Name (USAN). A handful of other countries (most notably Canada and Japan) follow the US naming convention and call it acetaminophen too; the vast majority of the planet follows the WHO standard and calls it paracetamol.

I did a quick dig into the wikipedia article, and it has the roots for the names as follows:

  Both acetaminophen and paracetamol come from a chemical name for the compound: para-acetylaminophenol and para-acetylaminophenol.
No real reason for why one took off in one area, versus the other, just what happened to stick!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#History