Question

What are the IUPAC rules for naming alkyl halides?

Answer 1

The IUPAC rules for naming alkyl halides

$1)$ The alkyl chain is numbered in such a way that the halogen atom gets the lowest possible number.

For eg, if we go from left to right, bromo gets 2- position and if we go from right to left, it gets 5 - position so the correct structure is (I).

$2-bromohexane$.

$2)$ If there are more than one halogen atom, then prefixes di, tri, tetra etc are used with specifying the position of the halogen atom.

For eg: The numbers are separated by commas then there is a hyphen to separate the numbering and the name.

$3)$ If there are different halogen atoms, then the lowest number is given to halogen atom which comes first in the alphabetical order.

For eg: they are named in the alphabetical order.

$\therefore$ Bromo comes first and also gets the lower number.