GRAMMAR
Common and Proper Nouns
What is the difference between common and proper nouns?
What are nouns? What's the difference between common and proper nouns?
Nouns
A noun is a part of speech that names some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas. Grammatically, a noun can function as a subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. There are different classifications of nouns:
- abstract nouns (e.g. freedom, love, courage...)
- Concrete nouns (e.g. table, dog, house...)
- Animate nouns (e.g.man, elephant, chicken...)
- Inanimate nouns (e.g. stone, wood, table...)
- Collective nouns (e.g. family, flock, audience...)
- Compound nouns (e.g. sister-in-law, schoolboy, fruit juice)
- Countable nouns (e.g. friends, books, rooms...)
- Uncountable nouns (e.g. water, bread, money...)
- Common nouns (e.g table, book, window...)
- Proper nouns (e.g. John, Joseph, London...)
This article will be concerned with the last two types of nouns: common and proper nouns.
Common and proper nouns
Common nouns
Common nouns name non-specific people (e.g. man, woman, girl...), places (e.g. city, ocean, country...), things (e.g. table, book, computer...), ideas (e.g. love, respect, envy...)
Remember:
1. Common nouns may be preceded by an article (the or a) :
- the city I like...
- a woman...
- the book over there.
2. Common nouns may be countable or uncountable:
- Countable: cities, friends, boys...
- Uncountable: love, hate, respect...
2. Common nouns are not capitalized unless they come at the beginning of a sentence.
Proper nouns
Proper nouns refer to specific people, places, or things.
- John
- Pacific Ocean
- London
- Mercedes
Remember:
1. Proper nouns are capitalized (e.g. Leila, California, Mississippi...)
2. Proper nouns are normally invariant for number: most are singular but a few, referring for instance to a family, mountain ranges or groups of islands, are plural.
- The Johnsons family
- The Himalayas
- The Hebrides.
3. Typically, English proper nouns are not preceded by an article (the or a) or other determiners (not, for instance, a John, the Kennedy).
4. English proper nouns are not also preceded by modifiers like many or much (not, many John ).
In a nutshell
Common nouns name nonspecific person, place, thing, or idea. Proper nouns are the names of specific people, places, things...
| Common nouns | Proper nouns |
|---|---|
| woman | Nancy |
| city | London |
| car | Toyota |
| mountain | Everest |
| writer | Ernest Hemingway |
| restaurant | Pizza Hut |
