Several text symbol lists for common rock-forming minerals have been published over the last 40 years, but no internationally agreed standard has yet been established. This contribution presents the first International Mineralogical Association (IMA) Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) approved collection of 5744 mineral name abbreviations by combining four methods of nomenclature based on the Kretz symbol approach. The collection incorporates 991 previously defined abbreviations for mineral groups and species and presents a further 4753 new symbols that cover all currently listed IMA minerals. Adopting IMA–CNMNC approved symbols is considered a necessary step in standardising abbreviations by employing a system compatible with that used for symbolising the chemical elements.

Cesium kupletskite has been renamed kupletskite-(Cs) with the approval of the IMA Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification, because the name of a mineral species should be a single word and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry spelling is caesium. The presence or absence of parentheses around the suffix chemical-element is discussed. The advantages of the chemical-element suffix nomenclature are stated.

This is the final report on the nomenclature of pyroxenes by the Subcommittee on Pyroxenes established by the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names of the International Mineralogical Association. The recommendations of the Subcommittee as put forward in this report have been formally accepted by the Commission. Accepted and widely used names have been chemically defined, by combining new and conventional methods, to agree as far as possible with the consensus of present use. Twenty names are formally accepted, among which thirteen are used to represent the end-members of definite chemical compositions. In common binary solid-solution series, species names are given to the two end-members by the ‘50% rule’. Adjectival modifiers for pyroxene mineral names are defined to indicate unusual amounts of chemical constituents. This report includes a list of 105 previously used pyroxene names that have been formally discarded by the Commission.