fatty alcohol (such as lauryl alcohol and stearyl alcohol) with an "eth" suffix, i.e., laureth and steareth. These terms are followed by an index for the average number of ethoxylate groups; for example, laureth-20 denotes an ethoxylated lauryl alcohol with about 20 ethoxy units on average and has the formula .

Fatty alcohols are precursors to another large class of surfactants, the sodium alkyl sulfates