Chemical nomenclature is perceived to be a closed topic. However, this work shows that the identification of polyanionic groups is still ambiguous and so is the nomenclature for some ternary compounds. Two examples, boron phosphate (BPO4) and boron arsenate (BAsO4), which were assigned to the large phosphate and arsenate families, respectively, nearly a century ago, are explored. The analyses show that these two compounds should be renamed phosphorus borate (PBO4) and arsenic borate (AsBO4). Beyond epistemology, this has pleasing consequences at several levels for the predictive character of chemistry. It paves the way for future work on the possible syntheses of SbBO4 and BiBO4, and it also renders previous structure field maps completely predictive, allowing us to foresee the structure and phase transitions of NbBO4 and TaBO4. Overall, this work demonstrates that quantum mechanics calculations can contribute to the improvement of current chemical nomenclature. Such revisitation is necessary to classify compounds and understand their properties, leading to the main final aim of a chemist: predicting new compounds, their structures and their transformations.

中文翻译：

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硼酸盐还是磷酸盐？就是那个问题。

化学术语被认为是封闭的话题。但是，这项工作表明聚阴离子基团的鉴定仍然是模棱两可的，某些三元化合物的命名也是如此。探索了两个示例，分别是近一个世纪前被分配给大型磷酸盐和砷酸盐家族的磷酸硼（BPO4）和砷化硼（BAsO4）。分析表明，这两种化合物应重命名为硼酸磷（PBO4）和砷酸硼（AsBO4）。除了认识论之外，这在化学的预测特性的几个层面上都具有令人愉悦的后果。它为将来可能的SbBO4和BiBO4合成工作铺平了道路，并且还使以前的结构场图完全可预测，使我们可以预见NbBO4和TaBO4的结构和相变。总体，这项工作表明，量子力学计算可以有助于改善当前的化学命名法。为了使化合物分类并了解其性质，进行此类复查是必要的，从而导致了化学家的主要最终目标：预测新化合物，其结构及其转化。