A thread here mentions the generic drug aducanamab and that reminded me of this question. It seems to me an unusually high proportion of generic drug names have this quality. Please do not respond with a counterexample. Of course if you don’t have share this impression you may say so.
If you agree, why do you think it is? Are drug names chosen to be easy to pronounce in many languages? Is it because their root words are from chemistry and chemistry uses such a principle?
Thank you.
Here is an extensive list of generic drug names.
At first glance (just skimming through the “A” page), I see plenty of examples and plenty of counter-examples.
(Not to mention various counter-examples of OP’s thesis that generic names are pronounceable 
at least in English.)
ETA: OP specifically mentions aducanamab – In that other thread, I recall some mention that this is simply bamanacuda spelled backward. So that’s just named after a dangerous game fish.
Many of them arise from a root followed by one or more suffixes, and most suffix form begin with a vowel, which allows flexibility. “Inimitability” is an example if a string of affixes. Alternating pharma-orthography is probably no more common than the general vocabulary of longish synthetic words. But when you see “semimanipulativity” your mind grasps it as a familiar word that you don’t need to parse in order to say it in your mind. It’s the parsing that calls its staccato features to attention.
This article has a pretty good rundown on the guidelines companies have to follow when naming a drug. In particular, pay attention to the section titled “Specific nomenclature rules”. One excerpt from that section:
“Bamanacuda” isn’t even a real word though, so that can’t be the reason. However, the “-mab” suffix of the name indicates it is a monoclonal antibody, and based on the official guidelines, a name ending in “-vir” (e.g. remdesivir) means an antiviral drug and ending in “-prazole” (e.g. omeprazole) means a proton-pump inhibitor, to give a couple of other examples.
I’ve wondered about aripiprazole, though, which is an antipsychotic drug and doesn’t appear to have anything to do (at least not obviously) with proton-pump inhibition.
Huh, yeah that appears to be one of the oddball exceptions that made it past the naming censors. Funny thing, I looked it up and a couple of sites indeed warn that it can be confused with other “-prazole” drugs, and that prescribing it for peptic ulcers can result in “unnecessary side effects” 
I used to work for an inbound call center specializing in setting up medical trials. We spent three days in a classroom with a vocab list of drug names, practicing their correct pronunciation. When we changed to a new trial, we got a new list of tongue twisters.
If I may…
Not a drug, but a country: United Arab Emirates
Apologies for veering off topic, but semi-related and a fun trivia fact.
mmm
Hi. I’m Phil Collins from Genesis. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if Abacab might be right for you.
Thanks for the interesting responses!
Nice try. Everyone knows that the suffix -mab indicates that it’s an Unseelie Sidhe drug.
This is because some of the suffixes that are “reserved” for different classes of drugs are actually chemical nomenclature that have been appropriated and used improperly by the pharmaceutical industry. For example, the -prazole name comes from azoles, which are five-membered rings that contain at least one nitrogen atom. Many proton-pump inhibitors contain that type of ring, so the name stuck, but not all proton-inhibitors do, which often leads to confusion among chemists. Piprazole is a (fairly rare) suffix that refers to phenylpiperazine, which is found in aripiprazole.
Thanks. So it is more accurately worded as ari-piprazole rather than aripi-prazole. Seems to me that, since you mentioned it is quite rare, chemists may find it worthwhile to define a new suffix for phenylpiperazine compounds, lest these mix-ups keep happening in the future.
It’s unusual enough that I doubt anyone would bother - they would probably just refer to it as phenylpiperazine if there was a chance of confusion. It’s more of a problem when the suffix is very common (as in the azole example), but even then it’s more of an annoyance than a real problem. It’s basically malapropisms that have become industry standard - grating to chemists, unnoticeable to anyone else.
OK, now that that’s answered, can someone explain the drug names that look like they are trying to set a scrabble single word record? Like Fulyzaq. Or Xeljanz.
Cat walking on the keyboard?
I think it’s needing a unique name which can’t be confused with some other drug name plus that there’s a awful lot of other drugs out there that often have multiple names. So those other drugs are using up a lot of the namespace and drug namers are getting desperate.
Plus they think they need to choose names that can’t be a double-entendre in any known language.
(ETA: I suppose the more unpronounceable a name is, the more likely they will succeed at this.)
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