A British Approved Name (BAN) is the official non-proprietary or generic name given to a pharmaceutical substance, as defined in the British Pharmacopoeia (BP).
The BAN is also the official name used in some countries across the world, because starting in 1953, proposed new names were evaluated by a panel of experts from WHO in conjunction with the BP commission to ensure naming consistency worldwide (an effort leading to the International Nonproprietary Name system).