Topic summary
Acetaminophen
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Paracetamol.
Naming
Paracetamol is the Australian Approved Name and the British Approved Name as well as the international nonproprietary name that is used by the World Health Organization (WHO); acetaminophen is the United States Adopted Name and the Canadian and Japanese Accepted Name. Both paracetamol and acetaminophen are contractions of chemical names for the compound. The word paracetamol is a shortened form of para-acetylaminophenol, and was coined by Frederick Stearns & Co in 1956, while the word acetaminophen is a shortened form of N-acetyl-p-aminophenol (APAP), which was coined and first marketed by McNeil Laboratories in 1955. The initialism APAP is used by dispensing pharmacists in the United States.