Talk:Amyl alcohol

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was No move Duja► 09:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

At present, Pentanol redirects to 1-Pentanol. It would be better to have this article there, and have amyl alcohol (an obsolete trivial name), redirect to Pentanol, which could then link to the various isomers. --Slashme 07:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that Amyl alcohol is an obsolete name - it gives more than twice as many hits (1.2m) in Google than does pentanol (0.5m, even though the latter is a common fragment in more complex names). Despite this, I think I could go along with the name change myself - many chemical catalogues use pentanol as the main name, and they are often slow to change. Also, many students are unfamiliar with the term amyl but they all learn pentyl. Post a comment at WP:Chem to get more opinions. Walkerma 08:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Though I know the name amyl alcohol for pentanol, I think in this case the more commonly used name in the lab is pentanol, Hence, I support the move. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose move (and create the proper discussion page per instructions at WP:RM and get the "discuss" link there). Amyl alcohol remains the more common name. Make the obvious fix and redirect pentanol to the more general amyl alcohol rather than to one particular isomer out of eight of them. Why such convoluted reasoning? Gene Nygaard 01:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

More general, I'll try it on some UK PhD-students today, but I believe they will not know amyl alcohol, but know pentanol, whereas they do know acetic acid, formaldehyde .. I don't think the google test discussed above gives reliable answers here (if ever). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

So, how will you know that the results of your original research are not a Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English issue?

Note also that most of the Google hits for "amyl alcohol" will be for the subjects of this article, but many of the hits for pentanol will not be for them but rather things such as (2,3,4,5)tetrahydroxy-pentanol (xylitol), 4-methyl-2-pentanol and 2,4-Dimethyl-3-pentanol and 2,3-Dimethyl-1-pentanol and the like. In addition, the terms amylalcohol and pentyl alcohol and n-pentyl alcohol (in addition to the n in generic references, 1-pentyl alcohol, etc.) and amylol are also used for the subject of this article, yet for some strange reason they are redlinks here. Why is that?

OTOH, Walkerma overstatated the case for his Google results, searching for just the two words for the 1.2 million hits (this would include anything with "amyl nitrate" and any alcohol, for example) and not the phrase "amyl alcohol", which still gives over a quarter of a million hits, and something with over a quarter of a million hits is not unknown and obsolete. Gene Nygaard 04:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.