A… B… C… D… E… K… wait! where’s F, G, H and I? And why are there so many Bs? The first vitamins were discovered and named in alphabetical order, until a Danish researcher discovered and named vitamin K. He named it after the Danish word for clotting, Koagulation, because vitamin K helps the blood to clot. Meanwhile scientists had found that what they thought was a single vitamin B was really a group of vitamins that are usually found together in the same foods. So numbers were attached to the B. By this time, the last B vitamins were discovered and the system of letter naming was out of style. Thus, some of the B vitamins are called only by their chemical names.

I love questions like this, they make people (like me) stop and think about it.

http://www.purchon.com/biology/vitamins.htm

When they were discovered they were given temporary names, starting with Vitamin A, then B, C, D and so on. Then we discovered that Vitamin B was a mixture of several different chemicals so they were given subscript numbers 1 to 12. We knew what they did, but did not know their chemical composition. Even though we now know their chemical names, we still use their temporary names. (I don’t know why we jumped from E to K.)

BONUS ANSWER

http://www.pubquizhelp.34sp.com/sci/vitamin.html

…………..Vitamin K group…………………….

http://www.cyberlipid.org/vitk/vitk0001.htm

The existence of the vitamin K group was discovered by H. Dam (Biochim. Zeitschr. 1929,

The only thing I actually have had experience with is Vitamin K it used to be rare to have that deficiency and have had it twice and been treated for such.

Thanks for the question.