The chemical name is the scientific or chemical description of the drug. The chemical name is not commonly used outside of industry or research. For example, amoxicillin is a drug with which we are all familiar. So you can see that a simpler name is needed and that is the generic name, amoxicillin. The generic name is the real or technical name for the drug used by industry and the medical profession.
Drugs usually have only one generic name.
However, a drug may have multiple trade names. When a patent expires, many companies make their own version of a drug, which will have identical chemical and generic names, but a different trade name. Continuing our amoxicillin example, this drug has a myriad of trade names, such as Amoxi-Drops. The generic name will be given in each example followed by a common trade name parenthetically. Let s now begin our investigation of the antimicrobials.