Well, if we're talking chemistry, I'm sure I've written many a name longer than that, myself. -- Some of them may even have been real compounds!
IUPAC is a wonderful invention, but admittedly much too cumbersome for everyday use. Hence the multitude of supplementary and semisystematic naming schemes.
Posted by Sili at October 31, 2007 09:34 PM'...microscopicsilico..."? That seems ill-formed. Surely it should be '...microscoposilico...', yes? Or is that part of the joke?
Posted by komfo,amonan at October 31, 2007 10:04 PMIt's ill-formed because it's a fabricated word, probably a hoax. More on P45 and other ultra-long words here.
Posted by Ben Zimmer at November 1, 2007 12:40 AMThe well-known "i18n" for "internationalization" dates from c.1985: how old is the nickname "p45", which I've never heard before? For consistency they should be the same: i18n and p43s, or i20 and p45.
Posted by mollymooly at November 1, 2007 06:36 AM"P45" has been used in the field of logology (recreational linguistics) since at least 1989. I think it goes back earlier than that, though -- possibly in the writings of Dmitri Borgmann.
Posted by Ben Zimmer at November 1, 2007 09:49 AMThere's a ton of this kind of thing in Chinese, but it can't be brought over.
Posted by John Emerson at November 1, 2007 12:09 PMP45 won't catch on in UK or Ireland, where it means something else, sadly not factitious.
Posted by mollymooly at November 1, 2007 08:07 PMpneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Surely "pneumonoultramicroscopic silicovolcanoconiosis" are two words?
(Apart from the fact that both words look pretty meaningless...)
Posted by David Marjanović at November 2, 2007 07:05 PMIt definitely does have an "o" there.
Posted by John Cowan at November 8, 2007 12:23 AM