Whenever we pick up a prescription medication, we see its name printed on the label—sildenafil, fluoxetine, alprazolam, or sertraline, for example. But have you ever wondered how those names are developed? Choosing what to call a medication is a careful process that blends scientific naming protocols with marketing and regulatory considerations.
Prescription drugs undergo two naming processes: one for the generic (nonproprietary) version and one for the brand (proprietary) name.
Generic names are assigned by international organizations, such as the U.S. Adopted Names (USAN) Council, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or the World Health Organization (WHO), to ensure consistency, clarity, and safety. Drug names follow strict guidelines describing the medication’s active ingredient, chemical makeup, or therapeutic effect. The drug manufacturer sits this part of the process out so that the name remains based purely on the drug’s chemical structure and allows prescribers globally to communicate about a drug without confusion.
Take drugs ending with the suffix -statin, which refers to a class of medications that lower cholesterol.
“If your patient is coming in and says, ‘Oh, I’m taking atorvastatin,’ you may not be familiar with that particular drug, but just from seeing the non-proprietary name that ends in -statin, you immediately can have a recognition that this is a drug to lower cholesterol,” explained Dr. Mariana Socal, an associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“It conveys that drug family very clearly,” she continued. “And I think that’s a very incredible success from our regulatory system.”
Biologics, which are medications derived from organic life and tend to be injections or infusions, have a different naming system—a nonproprietary name is combined with a distinguishing but random suffix, which helps tell the medications apart. This differentiation was developed to prevent medication errors and to help identify products for adverse effects and other post-marketing surveillance.
While the generic names are usually designated based on their chemical composition, brand names are chosen to make the drug memorable, marketable, and legally distinct from competitors. This is why you’re probably more familiar with the catchier brand names of the medications listed in the introduction: Viagra, Prozac, Xanax, and Zoloft.
Developing the brand name of a medication is equally intense but a bit more interesting. The company develops a name that’s catchy, distinctive, and easy to pronounce. In the U.S., that name is submitted to the FDA to ensure it’s not too similar to existing drug names. If it is, the name is revised so that they’re less likely to cause confusion or problems with spelling.
This process can take years because “the FDA is a real stickler,” explained David Holdford, a professor of pharmacotherapy at Virginia Commonwealth University. “They do a very thorough analysis.” This includes A/B testing and other consumer research methods in different languages and cultures to assess how the drug’s brand name resonates with consumers, and also to ensure it doesn’t have unintended negative meanings.
Naming a drug so that medical professionals can easily tell the function of a drug their patient is taking without consulting their Merck Manual is a sign of branding success. However, sometimes, a proprietary name can become so ubiquitous that it becomes a trademark issue for the company itself—a double-edged sword referred to as “genericide.” Think Kleenex and tissues or acetaminophen and Tylenol; while this could increase market share and brand awareness, it could also spell trouble for a company hoping to keep a valuable trademark.
PPharmaceutical companies often work with a brand consulting agency like Interbrand to develop a name acceptable to the FDA and differentiate their product on the market—and to, ideally, avoid becoming too synonymous with the generic medication.
“It is in the best interest of the drug manufacturer to find a name that is highly identifiable, highly recognizable, that can be marketed in a strategic way that can resonate with the users so that it can help the drug gain demand and market share,” said Socal.
This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
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