INCI names

Cosmetic ingredient lists use INCI names, not kitchen names. Each oil below has two: the botanical name it keeps in a lotion or balm, and the saponified name it takes in cold-process soap, where the oil reacts with lye. The two waxes, jojoba and beeswax, keep their own name everywhere, and so do the 41 other ingredients further down, from vitamin E to the preservatives.

The names come from the EU glossary of common ingredient names (Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2025/1175), cited by glossary reference number on each page. One detail the glossary settles: the binomial carries no parenthetical common name, so it is "Olea Europaea Fruit Oil", not "Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil". The bracketed form is the US name, and each page gives it.

Northern Ireland uses the same glossary. Great Britain still uses the glossary it kept from the EU (Decision (EU) 2019/701): the names are the same and the entry numbers are not. Potassium Shea Butterate is newer than that glossary, and used there as the generally accepted nomenclature that Article 19(6) points to.

Oils, butters and waxes

Other ingredients

The non-oil ingredients the soap and skincare tools know by name, with the US name where it differs. A few react with the lye in cold-process soap; their pages say how the tools list them there. A name that can mean more than one entry, such as plain "vitamin E" or "French green clay", has no row of its own: the tools ask which you mean.

Transcribed from the official glossary and checked against it; a labelling reference, not safety advice.