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A proper noun is a noun that in its primary application refers to a unique entity, such as London, Jupiter, Sarah, or Toyota, as distinguished from a common noun, which usually refers to a class of entities (cities, planets, persons, corporations), or non-unique instances of a certain class (a city, another planet, these persons, our corporation).^[1][2] Some proper nouns occur in plural form, and then they refer to groups of entities considered as unique (the Hendersons, The Azores, the Pleiades). Proper nouns can also occur in secondary applications, for example modifying nouns (the Mozart experience; his Azores adventure), or as de facto common nouns (he's no Pavarotti; they drive Toyotas). The detailed definition of the term is problematic and to an extent governed by convention.^[3]

Not all nouns that refer to a unique entity are proper nouns. Blackness and chastity are common nouns, even if blackness and chastity are considered unique abstract entities.

Proper names are distinguished from proper nouns^[4] by some linguists.^[5] When that distinction is made, proper nouns are limited to single words only (possibly with "the"), while proper names include all proper nouns (in their primary applications) as well as noun phrases such as United Kingdom, North Carolina, Royal Air Force, and the White House.^[5][4] United Kingdom, for example, is a proper name with the common noun kingdom as its head, and North Carolina is headed by the proper noun Carolina.^[4] Especially as titles of works, but also as nicknames and the like, some proper names contain no noun and are not formed as noun phrases (the film Being There; Hi De Ho as a nickname for Cab Calloway and as the title of a film about him).

Though the term common name is not much used in this context, it would mean a noun (or a noun phrase) that is not a proper name (Swiss cheese, and the common noun bluebird, are both common names in this sense).^[6] Sometimes proper names are called simply names; but that term is often used more broadly (as in "chair is the name for something we sit on").

Few proper nouns or proper names have only one possible referent—there are various towns named London; Jupiter may be a planet, a god, a ship, or a symphony; there are many people named Sarah; there are companies, towns, and people named Toyota; and there have been various United Kingdoms in the history of the world. But within the appropriate context, each of these names will be understood as referring to one unique case.

In English, proper nouns and names in their primary application cannot normally be modified by an article or other determiner (such as any or another), although some may be taken to include the article "the", as in The Gambia, The Roaring Forties or the Rolling Stones. A proper noun or name may be used without regard to any descriptive meaning apparently attached to it; or, if it had once been descriptive, it may no longer be so.^[7] For example, a woman named "Rose" is not claimed to be a flower, and a city called "Newtown" may now be quite old.

In many languages proper names, and words derived from them, are associated with capitalization; but the details vary (compare French lundi, canadien, and Canada with English Monday, Canadian, and Canada). Capitalization choices in English are often irregular or arbitrary (Socratic and Freudianism, but quixotic and mesmerism). Words derived from proper nouns and names are sometimes called proper adjectives (and so on); but not in mainstream linguistic theory. Not all proper nouns or proper names are capitalized (April, Lent; but summer, winter); and not all words that are capitalized are proper nouns or proper names (Dr, Spaniard, Christian, Baptist, African, Africanize, and Africanism are not proper nouns).

The study of proper nouns and proper names is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology; for a survey of detailed and pragmatic issues in naming see Name. Rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper nouns and names is a matter for philosophy of language; see Proper name (philosophy).

Capitalization and proper names[link]

In languages that use alphabetic scripts and that distinguish lower and upper case, there is usually an association between proper names and capitalization. (A prominent exception is German, in which all nouns are capitalized.) The details vary sharply from language to language—for proper nouns and proper names, and also for other words and phrases. For example, the days of the week and the months are capitalized in English, but not in Spanish, French, Swedish, or Finnish, though they may be understood as proper nouns in all of these. Languages differ in whether most elements of multiword proper names are capitalized (American English has House of Representatives, in which lexical words are capitalized) or only the initial element (as in Slovenian Državni zbor, "National Assembly"). In Czech, multiword settlement names are capitalized throughout, but non-settlement names are only capitalized in the initial element, though with many exceptions. In most alphabetic languages brand names and other commercial terms that are nouns or noun phrases are capitalized whether or not they count as proper names. Microsoft is a proper noun, referring to a specific company (English does not allow these phrases, unless Microsoft is treated non-standardly, as a de facto common noun: Microsofts, the Microsofts, another Microsoft). But Corvette (referring to a car) is not a proper noun: it can be pluralized (French and English Corvettes); and it can take a definite article or other determiner or modifier (the Corvette, la Corvette; my Corvette, ma Corvette; another new Corvette, une autre nouvelle Corvette).

In English[link]

In English, most proper names are capitalized; and words or phrases derived from proper nouns and proper names are generally capitalized, even when they are not themselves proper nouns or names. For example, Londoner is capitalized because it derives from the proper noun London, but it is not itself a proper noun (it can be limited: the Londoner, some Londoners). When "the" is part of a proper name, as in the White House, it is not normally capitalized unless it is a formal part of a title (of a book, film, or other artistic creation, as in The Keys to the Kingdom). Adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and derived common nouns that are capitalized (Swiss in Swiss cheese; Anglicize; Calvinistically; Petrarchism) are sometimes loosely called proper adjectives (and so on), but not in mainstream linguistics. Which items are capitalized may be merely conventional (Saturday, April, Easter, Abrahamic, Hollywoodize, and Reagonomics are capitalized; summer, quixotic, bowdlerize, and pasteurization are not; aeolian and alpinism may be capitalized or not).

In past centuries, orthographic practices in English, including noun capitalization, varied widely, with less standardization than today. Documents from the 18th century show some writers capitalizing all nouns and others capitalizing certain nouns based on varying ideas of their importance in the discussion. For example, the end (but not the beginning) of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and all of the Constitution (1787) show nearly all nouns capitalized, the Bill of Rights (1789) capitalizes a few common nouns but not most of them, and the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment (1865) only capitalizes proper nouns. Today English orthography has been standardized to the point that capitalizing common nouns is considered formally incorrect outside of sentence-initial or title case contexts. The principal exception is in references to God, where the old convention of capitalizing important words still commonly applies, sometimes even to pronouns (Him, His).

Nouns and noun phrases that are not proper may be uniformly capitalized to indicate that they are definitive and regimented in their application (compare brand names, discussed earlier). For example, Mountain Bluebird does not identify a unique individual, and it is not a proper name but a so-called common name (somewhat misleadingly, because this is not intended as a contrast with the term proper name). Such capitalization indicates that the term is a conventional designation for exactly that species, not for just any bluebird that happens to live in the mountains.

Capitalization in English today depends on uniqueness within an implicit context. Thus London, Jupiter, Sarah, and Toyota are understood as being unique within their context. However, in instances where a context shift is possible, and the context shift causes a shift from uniqueness to non-uniqueness, the capitalization decision may become a matter of perspective. Sometimes a word can function as either a common noun or a proper noun, depending on context. They have no universally agreed names, but the terms "capitonym"^[8] and "specific designator"^[9] have some currency.

Proper nouns and proper names[link]

There are many common nouns that are frequently used in proper names. Some examples are agency, boulevard, city, day, and edition. Proper-name usage occurs when a common noun functions as a name for a specific instance or case of a general type or abstraction; frequently it is joined with other words to create a multi-word noun phrase. For example:

• A rose grows on the third floor of the main building. (common-noun senses throughout; 'main building' is simply a description of the building)
• Rose lives on Floor 3 of the Main Building. (here 'Main Building' is the name of the building, and 'Rose' is the name of a person)

• The 16th robotic probe to land on the planet was assigned to study the north pole, and the 17th probe was assigned to the south pole. (common noun senses throughout)
• When Probe 17 overflew the South Pole, it passed directly over the place where Captain Scott's expedition ended. (In this hypothetical sentence, it is the Earth's south pole that is being referenced, and its proper name is the South Pole.)

• Sanjay lives on the beach road. (the road that runs along the beach)
• Sanjay lives on Beach Road. (as a proper name, Beach Road may have nothing to do with the beach; it may be a hundred km from the waterfront.)

• My university has a school of medicine. (no indication of the name of the university or its medical school)
• The John A. Burns School of Medicine is located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Proper nouns differ from common nouns grammatically. They may take titles, such as Mr Harris or Senator Harris. Otherwise, they normally only take modifiers that add emotive coloring, such as old Mrs Fletcher, poor Charles, or historic York; in a formal style, this may include 'the' (the inimitable Henry Higgins). They may also take or 'the' as temporary common nouns to establish the context in which they are unique: the young Mr Hamilton (not the old one), the Dr Brown I know; or as proper nouns to define an aspect of the referent: the young Einstein (Einstein when he was young). 'A' may similarly be used to establish a new referent: the column was written by a (one) Mary Price. If 'the' is inherent, however, as in The Hague, it cannot be dropped. Similarly, proper names based on noun phrases differ grammatically from common noun phrases. They are fixed expressions, and cannot be modified internally: beautiful King's College is acceptable, but not *King's famous College.^[10]

As with proper nouns, proper names may not only be unique within the appropriate context. For instance, India has a ministry of home affairs (a common-noun phrase) called the Ministry of Home Affairs (its proper name). Within the context of India, this identifies a unique organization. However, other countries may also have ministries of home affairs called "the Ministry of Home Affairs", but each refers to a unique object, and thus each is a proper name. Similarly, "Beach Road" is a unique road, though other towns may have their own roads named "Beach Road" as well. This is simply a matter of naming, and of whether a naming convention provides identifiers that are unique, which depends on the scope of context.

Most publishers attempt to codify consistent capitalization of ambiguous cases of proper and common names and nouns. For example, the Associated Press's AP Stylebook^[11] offers guidance to AP journalists and editors on how to consistently implement the AP's conventions. For example, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation is first mentioned, "Bureau" is capitalized because it is serving as part of a proper name. However, subsequent mentions, such as "the bureau announced", are lowercased, because it no longer occurs in its full form, though it is still a proper name and could be capitalized as "the Bureau announced".^[11] The same convention applies to the word ocean: "ocean: The five, from the largest to the smallest: Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Antarctic Ocean, Arctic Ocean. Lowercase ocean standing alone or in plural uses: the ocean, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."^[11] Similarly, the AMA Manual of Style^[9] advizes not to capitalize words such as level, case, or stage even in proper names, as in "In case 5, the patient was found to have stage IIIA disease".^[9]

Capitonyms[link]

A capitonym is a word that changes its meaning (and sometimes pronunciation) when it is capitalized. The capitalized version's meaning sometimes may be a special case of the lowercase version's meaning, or it may be eponymously related to it, though cases of capitonyms with no connection (Polish (of Poland) and (shoe) polish) do exist. For example:

• The common noun moon denotes any natural satellite of a planet, whereas the proper name the Moon references a specific moon, the Earth's moon. Dictionaries descriptively reflect that the latter sense is "often" capitalized (by which they imply "often [or usually] capitalized in educated writers' published writing").^[12][13]
• The proper noun (the) Sun refers to our star, whereas the common noun (in the) sun may refer to sunlight.^[12][13]
• The common noun god denotes any deity from any religion, whereas when used as a title to a unique deity, God is capitalized.^[12][13]
• The common noun crown metonymically became Crown in referring to specific monarchs.

In the case of Moon, the proper sense came first; when satellites were discovered around other planets, the word was extended. Capitalization is not required for the proper sense Moon, nor for Sun, but it may be useful in distinguishing the proper from common senses. In the cases of God and Crown, the common sense came first; the words were extended as titles, and as titles, are currently capitalized.

Translation decisions[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named Tiger Smith despite being neither a tiger nor a smith. For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages, although they may be transliterated. For example, the German surname Römer becomes Romer or Roemer in English. However, the translation of place names and the names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes universal. For instance, the Portuguese word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English; the English London becomes Londres in French, Portuguese and Spanish; and the Greek Ἀριστοτέλης (Aristotelēs) becomes Aristotle in English.

Generally, modern times brought abandonment of translation people names and surnames and significant abatement of translation of names of places, organizations, companies, projects, objects etc. The main reason is that the verbatim form and wording of the official name became a fixed identifier of the named subject, contrary to the past times when they were more variable and not formally stabilized.

Capitalized common nouns derived from proper nouns[link]

Proper nouns may be used as common nouns, as members of a unique class of common nouns. For example, the corporation Toyota builds vehicles which are colloquially called Toyotas; the fact that the latter is a common noun can be seen in how it can be modified: a Toyota, my Toyota, many Toyotas. Such uses typically arise through ellipsis or metonymy: a car made by Toyota → a Toyota car → a Toyota. Similarly with nationalities and members of religions: America and Christ are proper nouns, American and Christian are not, but retain the capitalization of the proper nouns they are based on. In many languages, such derivations lose the capitalization.

See also[link]

• Name
• Proper name (philosophy)

References[link]