Trade vs. Common Names: Know Your Pesticides

DR. RIC BESSIN

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

All pesticides sold in the United States have a trade name, common name, and chemical name.  While this can be confusing to many, there are important distinctions among these as they are used in different ways.  To add to this complexity, some pesticides with the same common name may be sold under numerous trade names, including a  large number of generic products.

Trade Name

Trade names are the names that the manufacturing company chooses to use for marketing the pesticide. If a particular active ingredient is being phased out, the manufacturer may choose to replace it in the pesticide product and change the name only slightly to take advantage of its name recognition in the marketplace.  Some trade names may have several descriptors, such as ‘KillzAll Granules for Lawns’ or just ‘KillzAll for Lawns.’  But minor differences in the trade name might indicate that the two products have different active ingredients.  For example, there is a line of ‘Sevin’ products with slightly different trade names, but when you look at the active ingredients on their labels, they have several different active ingredients or mixtures of active ingredients.  Why does this matter if they are all in the same chemical class (mode of action) as they are with the Sevin products?  Different active ingredients are not necessarily labelled on the same crops.  Additionally, the rates may be different between the different products. Both of these can be issues when a person purchases what they thought was a replacement for what they had and do not realize there could be substantial differences in patterns of use.

Common Name

Each active ingredient has a common name.  The common name is the name listed for the chemical in the active ingredients section of the label.  The common name is the accepted name for the chemical and is used by all companies to describe the contents of their pesticide. Many different products sold by different companies may have the same active ingredient, hence the same common name of the pesticide. This is frequently the case when a pesticide goes off patent and generic versions become available.

Figure 1. Common names of the pesticide must be listed in the ‘Active Ingredients’ portion of the label that describes the contents of the product.

Chemical Name

The chemical name usually follows the common name in the active ingredients section of the label.  Chemical names can be complex and are often only used by specialists in the industry.

Final Comments

It is a good practice, when you purchase a pesticide, to quickly check the front of the label for the common name to be certain it contains the active ingredient that you expect. Different active ingredients may have different use patterns, use restrictions, pre-harvest intervals, or environmental considerations. ∆

DR. Ric Bessin: Entomology Extension Specialist, University of Kentucky