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What do the letters of vitamins stand for?

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What do the letters of vitamins stand for?

Have you ever wondered how vitamins are named? These are the ABCs of vitamin nomenclature.

I t's time for some myth-busting: The "C" in "vitamin C" does not stand for "citrus," though the nutrient is famously abundant in citrus fruits. Science began exploring the unique capabilities of vitamins around 100 years ago, and named the essential compounds by highlighting their attributes and order of discovery.

In 1920, Polish biochemist Casimir Funk coined the term "vitamin," derived from the Latin word for life (vita) and "amine," a nitrogen-rich compound. Before this coinage, in the 1890s, a compound was identified that prevented beriberi, a disease that commonly afflicted sailors. Due to this usage, it was eventually named vitamin B. Next up in 1918, vitamin A was identified as "fat-soluble A" by nutrition scientist Elmer McCullum. While conducting food experiments, he found an "accessory" substance in some fats, choosing "A" as its epithet. The name was changed to "vitamin A" in 1920 with the coining of Funk's "vitamin." Vitamins A and B established an alphabetic naming convention with vitamins C, D, and E following suit alphabetically and in order of discovery. In 1929, Danish scientist Carl Peter Henrik Dam identified a new compound that, if the standard were followed, should have been named "vitamin F." However, Dam chose "vitamin K" in reference to the Danish word blodkoagulation (blood coagulation), emphasizing the vitamin's role in this process.

Later, researchers identified various forms of vitamins within the letter categorizations. They identified and numbered them during the next few decades, beginning with the earliest discovery, vitamin B1, or thiamine, named after the Greek word for sulfur, theion. By the 1930s and 1940s, 13 essential vitamins — A, C, D, E, K, and the eight B vitamins — had been identified and named. This includes vitamin B7 or biotin, which comes from the Greek biotos, meaning "life," and vitamin B9 or folic acid, which derives from the Latin folium, meaning "a leaf," a nod to its abundance in green, leafy vegetables.

While the names of vitamins might seem overwhelming or even arbitrary when you're staring at the rows of numbers and letters at the drugstore, each was carefully selected to represent its order of discovery or reflect its unique properties. It's more than just a letter; a vitamin's name reflects its history.

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