You should also be familiar with ammonia, a base with the formula NH₃.

Ammonia dissociates in water to form its conjugate acid (the ammonium ion) and hydroxide. For this reason, solutions of ammonia in water are often referred to as "ammonium hydroxide" solutions. However, ammonium hydroxide is not a stable compound in its pure form, and can only be found in solutions created by dissolving ammonia in water.

When an acid and a hydroxide base react in a neutralization, the products are water and an ionic compound, commonly called a "salt." It's important to note the difference between "salt" as a term referring specifically to table salt (NaCl) and "salt" referring generally to ionic compounds, of which NaCl is just one.

The image at right illustrates the formation of the salts NaCl and KNO₃ from neutralization reactions.

Salts are named simply by giving the names of the positive and negative ions. This is the same way we named the metal hydroxide bases to begin this lesson, except that now the negative ion is not hydroxide. Also remember, for transition metals, to include the Roman numeral that indicates the charge on the metal.

Some examples are shown at the right. You can go over your textbook and notes from CH 104 if you need a more comprehensive review of how to name ionic compounds.

As you probably noticed, all five of these ions have names and formulas that follow a general pattern. They have an initial element, some number of oxygens, and a negative charge of some kind. Also their names all end in "-ate."

For these ions, if you reduce the number of oxygens by one while keeping the charge the same, you get a "sibling" of the ion. And we name these "siblings" by changing the "-ate" ending to "-ite" as shown at right. So if we remember the formula of, say, nitrate and keep this rule in mind, we can discern that the formula of nitrite would be NO₂^-.

If we increase the number of oxygens by one (again keeping charge the same) we get a different "sibling" of the ion. In this case, we keep the "-ate" at the end and add "per-" at the beginning, so ClO₄^- is "perchlorate" as shown at right.

The image at right also introduces a new ion: bromate. Just like chlorine forms chlorate (ClO₃^-), its fellow halogens bromine and iodine can form the bromate and iodate ions (BrO₃^- and IO₃^-).

From an ion ending in "-ite" we can further reduce the number of oxygens as shown at right. When we go below the number of oxygens in an "-ite" ion we use the prefix "hypo-" (which means "below"). So we can get the "hypochlorite" and "hypoiodite" ions.

Not all families of ions are equally extensive. The carbonate ion, for instance, is an "only child" - carbon does not form any other stable oxyanions. Put another way, there are no such ions as "percarbonate" or "carbonite" (notwithstanding the latter's appearance in Star Wars). Nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur all form only two oxyanions: the "-ate" form and the "-ite" form.

In contrast, the halogens all form families of ions with four "siblings," (although some are more stable than others).

You will not be required to know which ions are and aren't formed. You will need to be able to name any oxyanion in these families based on its formula, or get a formula from a name. As we will see in a moment, you will also need to apply these naming and formula rules to acids derived from these ions.

Acids are named in one of two ways, depending on whether they are binary acids – that is, they consist of only two elements – ore they are ternary acids, made up of three elements. Note that “binary” does not mean “only two atoms.” Binary acids can have more than two atoms, but they are atoms of only two different elements. Similarly, ternary acids can have more than three atoms, but they are atoms of only three different elements. Many ternary acids are also called “oxy-acids” because one of the three elements is oxygen.

The names of the binary acids begin with the prefix “hydro,” followed by a root that is based on the name of the element the hydrogen is combined with, then the suffix “-ic.” They end with the word “acid.” HCl, for example, would be hydrochloric acid.

While other binary compounds outside the haloacids (HCl, HBr, etc.) can be acidic (HS is the most prominent example), most of them are neutral (H₂O, CH₄) or even basic (NH₃) so it is the haloacids you should focus on.

Ternary acids consist of a polyatomic ion combined with hydrogen. Their names are derived from the polyatomic ions they contain. In general, the “-ate” ending of the polyatomic ion is replaced with the “-ic” ending and the word “acid” is added.

You can see the important difference here between "chloric acid" and "hydrochloric acid" - they refer to very different formulas, so getting the details of the naming correct is very important.

For two elements, there is a small insertion into the name. The acid formed from the sulfate ion is called sulfuric acid, while the acid formed from the phosphate ion is called phosphoric acid. Note the addition of “-ur-” in the first name and “-or-” in the second.

There is no real good reason for these exceptions; their names were in common use well before attempts at standardized naming got underway, so they hung on as oddballs.

The changing of "-ate" to "-ic" holds for all acids that come from oxyanions, like bromate, perchlorate, etc. It also holds for acetate/acetic acid, even though acetate isn't strictly an oxyanion.

For oxyanions that end in "-ite" like we learned about in the previous section, the ending "-ous" is used. So HClO is "hypochlorous acid," as illustrated at right.

We have one last topic here that straddles the line between Acids and Salts. For ions with -2 or -3 charges, it is possible for them to become partially protonated. This means that in between the carbonate ion (CO₃^2-) and carbonic acid (H₂CO₃) there is an intermediate species: the hydrogen carbonate ion, with formula HCO₃^- as shown at right.

This type of species is possible for any ion with a -2 or -3 charge. For ions like phosphate (PO₄^3-) multiple intermediate ions are possible: hydrogen phosphate (HPO₄^2-) and dihydrogen phosphate (H₂PO₄^-).