The complete system of naming chemical compounds is very complex and well beyond the scope of this course. However, we can look at some simple parts of the nomenclature to get an idea of how it works. In fact, the naming scheme used by chemists tells us about chemistry, because the nature of the material named is used in the choice of its name. When elements from the right react with metals, they gobble up these electrons to form negative ions, or anions . Compounds formed between metals and nonmetals where this takes place are called ionic compounds and they are named from the ions that compose them.
Cations formed from metals have the same name as the metal.
If the metal can form more than one different positive ion, the charge state of the metal is put in roman numerals within parenthesis following the metal name. Many polyatomic anions contain oxygen and these are called oxyanions. Usually, these anions come in groups that have the same charge but different numbers of oxygen atoms. Acids are named from the anions that they are formed from since we know the cation they contain is Hydrogen ion. We just change the suffix of the anion and add the word 'acid'.