Proper and common nounsthey have such an inherent characteristic of how to switch places, that is, a proper name can become a nominal name, and vice versa. Such a smallness is very often misleading. Let's understand the subtleties, terms and details.
What is a proper name?The most common name or name. It may belong to a person or a dog, a country or a mountain range, a cake or a magazine. It doesn't matter to whom or what, the main thing is that it is this word that distinguishes an object, a creature, or something else from a number of the rest. For example: Guadeloupe (name of the country), King Kong (the name of a monkey from the film of the same name), Gennadiev Gennady Gennadyevich (first name, surname and patronymic belonging to one person). That is, all three examples are nouns of their own, despite the fact that some of them consist of several components.
What is a proper name in terms ofgrammar? It is a noun that must be capitalized and does not have a plural number (with the exception of surnames belonging to a group of persons (Smirnovs, Kulikovs). In cases where the proper name is used for the name of the store, hotel, newspaper or car brand, its should also be written in quotation marks, for example, the “Progress” plant. In this particular case, the word factory is a household noun, and “Progress” is a proper noun and written with a capital letter in quotation marks, as it indicates the name of the enterprise.
Now let's consider what a name is.own beyond context? Often just a noun. Take the previous example and consider the word “progress”, which means moving forward. Unlike the previous phrase now in the sentence, where it will denote its direct concept, it will be a noun. Compare:
- I work at the Progress plant (proper name).
- In my work, there has been a progress (common name).
From the above it can be concluded that the wordper se, it rarely carries a clear notion of what it is. You can understand the essence of the context, with the exception of personal names. Although in some cases even the name cannot be the guarantor of what is a proper noun, and not a household name. For example, the name of Faith. Compare:
- The girl Vera (proper name) left us.
- At the last moment, faith (common name) left us.
In the first case, the person’s name is used, and in the second, a term denoting confidence in something.
At the end of the article I would like to tell you what isa proper name from the point of view of science. A huge "field" to explore. The fact is that a proper name has a certain stability, allowing scientists to reconstruct historical facts, migration routes, disappeared settlements and much more. The science that studies proper names is called onomastics. It is also worth noting that proper names in English, as well as in German, Portuguese or any other language of the world, which has both the alphabet and the differences between lowercase and uppercase, are also written with a capital letter.
