system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: how do they decide the name and generic name of medications?
gpt
When chemists name chemicals it is not as much a name as a description of it using Greek words. This is also why some chemicals can have multiple names as there are multiple ways of describing a chemical. The problem with these names is that they can not be trademarked because it is just a description of the chemical. They might also not be as easy to market. So drug companies go to their marketing department and ask them to come up with a better name. It may sometimes be similar to the chemical name but does not have to be. The designers in the marketing department need to come up with a name which sound good and distinctive to the group of people they try to market towards.