Abstract

Portuguese is ranked seventh among the world's languages in number of native speakers (over 200 million) and the universe of all Latin “daughter languages” is over 700 million people (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian). There is confusion in Portuguese language and other Latin based languages about the use of the trivial nomenclature of gluco-hexose that sometimes is written as “glucose” other times as “glicose”. Because of that, there are implications in the nomenclature of several compounds and it is our objective to review and discuss the scientific base behind the use of this trivial name. An elucidative example is the existence of two different enzyme names: glycosylceramidase (EC 3.2.1.62) and glucosylceramidase (EC 3.2.1.45). We can conclude that in Portuguese and other Latin derived languages, it is recommended the use “glucose” to refer gluco-hexose. The term “glicose” (in English, glycose) also can be utilised but with another sense that means any monosaccharide as a structural residue.

Key words: Biochemical nomenclature, glycose, glucose.