---
title: INCI Names Have Only Four Rules. The Rest Is Registration Detail
author: Pharmacist Hsiao-Chen
lang: en
canonical: https://www.pharmachen.com/pif/en/importer/inci-four-rules/
published: 2026-09-08
---

# INCI Names Have Only Four Rules. The Rest Is Registration Detail

**Bottom line：** INCI is a naming system, not a safety list: the Personal Care Products Council assigns one fixed name to every cosmetic ingredient, and the regulators in the EU, the United States and Canada each decide the order in which those names are printed. Four rules cover most of any label: one name per ingredient, descending order by weight down to 1%, one word ("parfum") for the whole fragrance blend, and Latin binomials plus plant part for botanicals.

Turn a cream over and the back of the pack reads like a chemistry exam answered in two languages. Aqua. Glycerin. Cetearyl Alcohol. Butyrospermum Parkii Butter. Phenoxyethanol. Limonene. Nobody wrote it that way for your reading pleasure, but nobody wrote it carelessly either. It is a standardised format, and four rules carry most of it.

## The short version

Cosmetic ingredient names come from INCI, a nomenclature published by the Personal Care Products Council. Four rules explain most of an ingredient list: one fixed name per ingredient, descending order by weight down to 1%, a single word "parfum" for the whole fragrance blend, and Latin binomials plus plant part for botanicals. The list tells you what the manufacturer put in and roughly in what order. It never tells you how much, and it never tells you whether it suits you.

## INCI assigns one name to every ingredient and says nothing about safety

INCI stands for International Nomenclature Cosmetic Ingredient. The Personal Care Products Council describes an INCI name as the internationally recognised, systematic name used to identify a cosmetic ingredient, assigned by its International Nomenclature Committee and published in the International Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary and Handbook. One substance, one name, the same everywhere the system is used.

The Council is equally clear about what the name is not. An INCI name does not mean an ingredient is approved for cosmetic use, and it does not mean the ingredient is safe; that assessment belongs to whoever places the product on the market. The name is an identifier. Its job is to let you look a substance up.

Three regulators reach the same dictionary by three routes. In the EU, Article 33 of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 requires the Commission to compile a glossary of common ingredient names, taking account of internationally recognised nomenclatures "including the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI)", and gives companies twelve months from publication to switch to those names. The glossary in force is annexed to Implementing Decision (EU) 2025/1175, which repealed the 2022 version and applies from 30 July 2026, so a jar filled within a year before that date may still be lawfully using an older name. Canada is blunter: section 21.2(1) of the Cosmetic Regulations says every ingredient on the outer label must be listed by its INCI name only.

The United States is the odd one out, and that is why US labels look the way they do. 21 CFR 701.3(c) sets a hierarchy of name sources: first a name established under §701.30, then the CTFA Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary, then the compendia listed in (c)(2)(ii) to (v), namely the United States Pharmacopeia, the National Formulary, the Food Chemicals Codex and the USAN drug-name dictionary, and only then a name "generally recognized by consumers". The FDA adds that ingredients must be listed by their "common or usual names" and that it "does not accept" the alternatives in their place: not a Latin binomial alone, not a Colour Index number alone, not "Aqua" or "Parfum". In parentheses, however, it has no objection, which is where the American two-names-per-ingredient style comes from. The FDA's own examples:

- Water (Aqua)
- Fragrance (Parfum)
- Sweet Almond (Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis) Oil
- FD&C Yellow No. 5 (CI 19140)

## The order is by weight, and it stops carrying information at 1%

The EU rule is one sentence: "the list of ingredients shall be established in descending order of weight of the ingredients at the time they are added to the cosmetic product." The words at the time they are added do real work: water that later evaporates was still weighed in the mixing tank, so the order describes the formula, not the jar in your hand.

Then it stops: "Ingredients in concentrations of less than 1% may be listed in any order after those in concentrations of more than 1%." That is the whole of the famous 1% line: one permission in half a sentence.

The United States differs on paper and matches in practice. The default in 21 CFR 701.3(a) is plain descending order of predominance with no exemption below 1%; the familiar grouped style is an alternative offered in paragraph (f). Canada writes the same architecture into section 21.4.

Six questions, three regimes. EU: Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, Article 19(1)(g) and Article 33. US: 21 CFR 701.3. Canada: Cosmetic Regulations, sections 21.2 and 21.4.

| Question | EU | United States | Canada |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Which names? | Commission glossary, based on INCI | Hierarchy of compendia headed by the CTFA Dictionary; English "common or usual names" | INCI names only |
| Order | Descending by weight at the time of addition | Descending order of predominance | Descending by weight |
| Below 1% | After the ingredients above 1%, in any order | Grouped alternative under paragraph (f), in any order | After the ingredients above 1%, in random order |
| Colourants | May go last, in any order; CI nomenclature "where applicable" | May go last under paragraph (f), in any order; certified names such as FD&C Yellow No. 5 | Last, in any order, regardless of concentration |
| Fragrance blends | "parfum" or "aroma", plus each Annex III substance listed individually | "fragrance" or "flavor", with no allergens broken out | "parfum" or "aroma", plus fragrance allergens above the EU thresholds |
| Shade ranges | "may contain" or "+/-" | "may contain" | "+/-", "±" or "may contain/peut contenir" |

Both the EU and the US texts say colourants may be listed last; neither says must. A colourant printed mid-list in its weight position is not an error but the less common lawful option.

## The 1% line is real, and you cannot see where it falls

This is where the most confident wrong answers about labels come from. The line exists, but nothing on the pack marks it: no separator, no change of punctuation, no ingredient that must sit on the boundary. Above 1%, ordered by weight. Below 1%, whatever suits the layout.

One landmark is set by law rather than habit, and it is the one you actually meet on labels. Phenoxyethanol has a ceiling: Annex V lists the permitted preservatives and their maximum concentrations, and entry 29 allows up to 1.0% in the ready-for-use preparation. It cannot sit above the line. And since everything above 1% must be printed before the below-1% group, a conclusion follows: every entry after phenoxyethanol is at 1% or below. It holds under strict weight ordering, because later means lighter; it holds under the grouped style too, because they all fall inside the same unordered block.

The other landmarks are habit. Xanthan gum, carbomer, disodium EDTA and the named fragrance allergens are what people reason from, and they do usually sit near the end. But the first three appear in no annex at all, so their position is a clue, not proof. Treating a clue as a boundary is the same mistake as "non-comedogenic" scoring that grades ingredients one by one.

Two more things the line will not tell you. An ingredient at 0.9% may lawfully be printed before one at 0.95%, so ranking the last two entries is guessing, not reading. And a percentage claimed on the front is not vouched for by the back: there are no numbers anywhere in an ingredient list, so "10% niacinamide" is a claim the list can neither support nor contradict.

> A landmark is not a boundary. "Everything after xanthan gum is below 1%" is a guess dressed as a fact. "Everything after phenoxyethanol is at 1% or below" is deduced from a published maximum. The two sentences look alike and are not the same.

Names mentioned in this section: the 1% landmarks, and three names that usually sit above the line:

- Phenoxyethanol
- Disodium EDTA
- Xanthan Gum
- Carbomer
- Glycerin
- Niacinamide
- Hyaluronic Acid

## "Parfum" is one word shared by a whole blend, and Europe now makes it say a little more

Read Article 19(1)(g) again: "perfume and aromatic compositions and their raw materials shall be referred to by the terms 'parfum' or 'aroma'." One entry, any number of substances behind it. The US permission is shorter still: 21 CFR 701.3(a) says a fragrance or flavour "may be designated as fragrance or flavor", with no breakdown at all.

The European exception follows immediately: substances whose presence must be indicated under the "other" column of Annex III "shall be indicated in the list of ingredients in addition to the terms parfum or aroma". That is why Limonene, Linalool, Geraniol and Coumarin crowd in after Parfum on European packs. They are not a second fragrance; they are the parts of the first one that the law makes the manufacturer name.

That list just got longer, and the numbers are worth getting exactly right. Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 records that the "24 fragrance allergens currently listed in entries 45 and 67 to 92 of Annex III" must be labelled individually, and that the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety "identified an additional 56 fragrance allergens which have clearly caused allergies in humans and for which there is currently no requirement for individual labelling". The regulation brings all 56 into the labelling obligation, at a threshold of "0,001% in leave-on products and 0,01% in rinse-off products". Resist adding the two numbers together: Annex III numbers entries, not substances, and several entries cover a whole group of isomers under one line. So 24 and 56 are the regulation's own figures; any grand total you see quoted is someone else's arithmetic, not the regulation's.

Read the threshold precisely. 0.001% is ten parts per million, so Limonene on a leave-on product means it is above ten parts per million, not that there is a lot of it. Its absence means below that value or not added at all, and the label cannot tell those two apart.

If you are comparing two packs, the transition dates matter. Products that do not comply with the new restrictions may be placed on the EU market until 31 July 2026 and made available until 31 July 2028. The first date has passed; the second has not. A cream printed under the old rules is lawfully on a European shelf right now, next to the same cream printed under the new ones; its allergen line is shorter, and nothing about that is wrong. Canada follows the same timetable, defining fragrance allergens by reference to Annex III with the same thresholds. The United States requires none of it.

## A botanical name carries species, plant part and form

Read a botanical INCI name left to right and it comes apart cleanly. Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter: genus, species, common name, form. Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice: genus, species, part, form. Rosa Damascena Flower Water, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis Oil, the same grammar every time. Canada makes the first half mandatory: section 21.2(3) requires "at least the genus and species portions of the INCI name".

Latin is also the part of a label most likely to survive a language you cannot read: identical in Seoul, Istanbul and Lisbon when every other word has changed. The rest of the meaning is carried by the word for form.

- Oil: the lipid fraction pressed or extracted from the named part.
- Butter: a lipid fraction that is solid at room temperature.
- Water, Juice, Flower Water, Distillate: the aqueous fraction, mostly water.
- Extract: something was taken out of the plant with a solvent. The name does not say which solvent, in what ratio, or how concentrated the result is; no regulation requires a concentration anywhere in an ingredient list.
- Powder: the ground plant part itself.

So one plant can appear twice in a list in two forms, weighed separately. And an extract high up the list does not prove how much plant is in it: "extract" is a word about form, not strength.

## Three kinds of name are misread more than any other

### Alcohol Denat. and Cetearyl Alcohol are not the same kind of thing

Alcohol Denat. is ethanol with a denaturant added so it cannot be drunk; in the United States these grades are the SD Alcohol series, brought into cosmetic labelling by 21 CFR 701.3(c)(2)(i) as "SD Alcohol (all 27 alphanumeric designations)". It evaporates. Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol and Stearyl Alcohol are fatty alcohols: waxy solids used to thicken a product and hold an emulsion together. Whether either suits you is a question about you, not about the word, but the word really is doing two jobs.

### The number after PEG or -eth is part of the name, not a quantity

PEG-8, PEG-100 Stearate, Laureth-4, Ceteareth-20: each is one dictionary entry, and the number belongs to the name. It is not a percentage, not a rank in the list, not a strength; there are no quantities in an ingredient list at all. What these forms are good for is grouping: in a forty-item list, the PEG- prefix and the -eth suffix pick out every ethoxylated ingredient faster than reading name by name.

### -methicone and -siloxane mark the silicones

Dimethicone, Amodimethicone, Dimethicone Crosspolymer, Cyclopentasiloxane: two suffixes, one family, and a list can hold four of them without once using the word silicone. Learning to spot those two endings at a glance is the whole trick, and it works on a bottle in a hotel bathroom with a dead phone.

The names this guide keeps returning to:

- Alcohol Denat.
- Cetearyl Alcohol
- Cetyl Alcohol
- Stearyl Alcohol
- Dimethicone
- Fragrance / Parfum
- Limonene
- Linalool
- Geraniol
- Coumarin

## What an ingredient list does not have to say

- How much of anything. Nowhere in the three regimes does a quantity appear. Order is the only quantitative signal, and below 1% even order stops counting.
- Impurities. Article 19(1)(g) excludes "impurities in the raw materials used" and "subsidiary technical materials used in the preparation but not present in the final product" from the definition of ingredients.
- Incidental ingredients. 21 CFR 701.3(l) exempts substances that arrive with another ingredient and have no technical or functional effect of their own, and processing aids removed before packaging.
- The names of some ingredients. Where the FDA has granted an exemption from public disclosure under §720.8(a), a US list may end with "and other ingredients".
- Most of what sits behind parfum, apart from the allergens one regime forces into the open.

None of this makes an ingredient list untrustworthy. It defines the job narrowly: name, in a nomenclature you can look up and in a prescribed order, the substances a manufacturer deliberately put in. The harder cases, where the question is really about a body rather than a label, are a different subject.

This page describes a naming standard. It does not say any ingredient is safe or unsafe, and it does not tell you what to avoid: whether a named substance matters for your skin, your allergies or your pregnancy is a decision for you and a health professional who knows your history.

## Sources

- Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products, Article 19 (labelling) and Article 33 (glossary of common ingredient names). EUR-Lex, Publications Office of the European Union (checked 2026-09-02)
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545, amending Annex III as regards fragrance allergen labelling, recitals 5 to 7 and the Annex transition footnotes. EUR-Lex (checked 2026-09-02)
- Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2025/1175, the glossary in force, repealing Decision (EU) 2022/677 and applying from 30 July 2026. EUR-Lex (checked 2026-09-02)
- Commission Decision (EU) 2019/701 establishing a glossary of common ingredient names, recital 1 on INCI (since superseded by Decision (EU) 2025/1175). EUR-Lex (checked 2026-09-02)
- 21 CFR 701.3, Designation of ingredients, paragraphs (a), (c), (f), (g) and (l). US Government Publishing Office (checked 2026-09-02)
- Cosmetic Ingredient Names, "common or usual names", and Latin, CI and INCI equivalents in parentheses. US Food and Drug Administration (checked 2026-09-02)
- Cosmetics Labeling Guide, ingredient declaration. US Food and Drug Administration (checked 2026-09-02)
- INCI: International Nomenclature Cosmetic Ingredient, and what an INCI name does not mean. Personal Care Products Council (checked 2026-09-02)
- Cosmetic Regulations (C.R.C., c. 869), sections 21.2 and 21.4: INCI names, order, botanicals, fragrance allergens. Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada (checked 2026-09-02)
- Request for a scientific opinion on 2-phenoxyethanol, "regulated in Annex V/29 ... at a maximum concentration of 1.0%". European Commission, Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (checked 2026-09-02)
- Annex V (permitted preservatives), entry 29: phenoxyethanol, maximum 1.0% in the ready-for-use preparation. legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives (checked 2026-09-02)

## FAQ

### Does an INCI name mean the ingredient is safe?

No. An INCI name is only an identifier that lets you look a substance up; it does not mean the ingredient is approved for cosmetic use, and the safety assessment is the responsibility of whoever places the product on the market.

### Does an ingredient higher on the list mean there is more of it?

Only above 1%, where ingredients are ordered by weight. Below 1% they may be listed in any order, and nothing on the pack marks where that line falls, so the rank of the last few entries cannot be used to compare amounts.

### Why do European lists show Limonene and Linalool after Parfum?

Those are fragrance allergens the law requires to be named individually, not a second fragrance. Substances listed in Annex III of the EU regulation must be declared beside parfum when they exceed 0.001% in leave-on products or 0.01% in rinse-off products.

### Why do US labels give two names for one ingredient?

Because the FDA requires ingredients to be listed by their common or usual names. It does not accept a Latin binomial, a Colour Index number, "Aqua" or "Parfum" on their own, but it allows them in parentheses, which produces the Water (Aqua) and Fragrance (Parfum) style.

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