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The cation is always named first. Ions can be metals, non-metals or polyatomic ions. Therefore, the name of the metal or positive polyatomic ion is followed by the name of the non-metal or negative polyatomic ion. The positive ion retains its element name whereas for a single non-metal anion the ending is changed to -ide.
Cations are positively (+) charged ions while anions are negatively (−) charged. This can be remembered with the help of the following mnemonics. Cats have paws ⇔ Cations are pawsitive. [27] Ca+ion: The letter t in cation looks like a + (plus) sign. [28] An anion is a negative ion. (An egative ion ⇒ Anion). [29]
A cation is a positively charged ion with fewer electrons than protons [2] (e.g. K + (potassium ion)) while an anion is a negatively charged ion with more electrons than protons. [ 3 ] (e.g. Cl − (chloride ion) and OH − (hydroxide ion)).
This is a difference from organic compound naming and substitutive naming where chlorine is treated as neutral and it becomes chloro, as in PCl 3, which can be named as either substitutively or additively as trichlorophosphane or trichloridophosphorus respectively. Similarly if the anion names end in -ite, -ate then the ligand names are -ito, -ato.
The cation retains its elemental name (e.g., iron or zinc), but the suffix of the nonmetal changes to -ide. For example, the compound LiBr is made of Li + cations and Br − anions; thus, it is called lithium bromide. The compound BaO, which is composed of Ba 2+ cations and O 2− anions, is referred to as barium oxide.
The name of the cation (the unmodified element name for monatomic cations) comes first, followed by the name of the anion. [100] [101] For example, MgCl 2 is named magnesium chloride, and Na 2 SO 4 is named sodium sulfate (SO 2− 4, sulfate, is an example of a polyatomic ion).
In chemistry, a counterion (sometimes written as "counter ion", pronounced as such) is the ion that accompanies an ionic species in order to maintain electric neutrality. In table salt (NaCl, also known as sodium chloride) the sodium ion (positively charged) is the counterion for the chloride ion (negatively charged) and vice versa.
Atoms that lose electrons make positively charged ions (called cations). This transfer of electrons is known as electrovalence in contrast to covalence. In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be more complex, e.g. polyatomic ions like NH + 4 or SO 2− 4.