metāns

Etymology
Borrowed from other European languages, probably or, words, in turn, coined in the late 1860s on the basis of  or  (with the final yl removed because of its wrong identification with a formative suffix) and the suffix , invented and proposed in 1866 by German Chemist August Wilhelm van Hoffmann to indicate a chain of carbon atoms with no double bonds.

Noun

 * 1)  methane CH4, the simplest aliphatic hydrocarbon