section_path: Lexicographic conventions/Unit names
section_name: Unit names
paragraph_text: Unit names
  
  According to the SI Brochure, unit names should be treated as common nouns of the context language. This means that they should be typeset in the same character set as other common nouns (e.g. Latin alphabet in English, Cyrillic script in Russian, etc.), following the usual grammatical and orthographical rules of the context language. For example, in English and French, even when the unit is named after a person and its symbol begins with a capital letter, the unit name in running text should start with a lowercase letter (e.g., newton, hertz, pascal) and is capitalised only at the beginning of a sentence and in headings and publication titles. As a nontrivial application of this rule, the SI Brochure notes that the name of the unit with the symbol °C is correctly spelled as 'degree Celsius ': the first letter of the name of the unit, 'd', is in lowercase, while the modifier 'Celsius' is capitalised because it is a proper name.
  
  The English spelling and even names for certain SI units and metric prefixes depend on the variety of English used. US English uses the spelling deka-, meter, and liter, and International English uses deca-, metre, and litre. The name of the unit whose symbol is t and which is defined according to 1 t = 10 kg is 'metric ton' in US English and 'tonne' in International English.