Each person uses several hundred nouns in his speech daily. However, not everyone will be able to answer the question of which category this or that word belongs to: proper nouns or common nouns, and whether there is a difference between them. Meanwhile, not only written literacy, but also the ability to correctly understand what is read depends on this simple knowledge, because often, only after reading a word, you can understand whether it is a name or just the name of a thing.
Noun: what is it
Before you figure out which nouns are called proper, and which are common nouns, it is worth remembering what it is.
Nouns are words that answer the questions “What?”, “Who?” and denoting the name of things or persons ("table", "person"), they vary in declination, childbirth, numbers and cases. In addition, words related to this part of speech are proprietary / common.
Concept of a noun: common nouns and nouns
Except for rare exceptions, all nouns belong to the category of either proper or common nouns.
Common nouns include the summed names of homogeneous things or phenomena that may differ from each other in some features, but will still be called in one word. For example, the noun “toy” is a common noun, although it generalizes the names of various objects: cars, dolls, bears, and other things from this group. In Russian, as in most others, common nouns are always written with a small letter.
Proper nouns are the names of individuals, distinguished things, places or persons. For example, the word "doll" is a common noun that names a whole category of toys, but the name of the popular brand of dolls "Barbie" is a proper name. All proper names are capitalized.
It is worth noting that common nouns, unlike their own, carry a certain lexical meaning. For example, when it says “doll”, it becomes clear that it is a toy, but when they simply call the name “Masha” outside the context of a common noun, it is not clear who or what it is - a girl, a doll, the name of a brand, a hairdresser or a chocolate bar.
Ethnonyms
As mentioned above, nouns are proper and common nouns. So far, linguists have not yet reached a consensus on the relationship between these two categories. 2 views on this question are widespread: according to one, there is a clear dividing line between common nouns and proper nouns; according to another, the dividing line between these categories is not absolute due to the frequent transition of nouns from one category to another. Therefore, there are so-called "intermediate" words that do not apply to either proper or common nouns, although they have signs of both categories. These nouns include ethnonyms - words meaning the names of peoples, nationalities, tribes, and other similar concepts.
Common Nouns: Examples and Types
In the vocabulary of the Russian language the most common nouns. All of them are usually divided into four types.
1. Concrete - indicate objects or phenomena that can be counted (people, birds and animals, flowers). For example: “adult”, “child”, “blackbird”, “shark”, “ash”, “violet”. Specific common nouns almost always have a plural and unique form and are combined by quantitative quantitative: “adult - two adults”, “one violet - five violets”.
2. Abstract - denote concepts, feelings, objects that cannot be counted: "love", "health", "quick wit." Most often, this type of common nouns is used only in the singular. If, for one reason or another, a noun of this kind has acquired a plural (“fear - fears”), it loses its abstract meaning.
3. Substances - denote substances that are homogeneous in composition and do not have separate items: chemical elements (mercury), food (pasta), medicines (citramone) and other similar concepts. Real nouns cannot be counted, but they can be measured (kilogram of pasta). Words of this kind of common nouns have only one form of number: either plural or singular: “oxygen” is a singular, “cream” is a plural.
4. Collective - these are nouns, meaning a set of objects of the same type or persons, as a single, inseparable whole: "brotherhood", "humanity". Nouns of this kind cannot be counted and are used only in the singular form. However, with them you can use the words "a little", "a few", "a little" and the like: a lot of guys, how many infantry and others.
Proper nouns: examples and types
Depending on the lexical meaning, these types of proper nouns are distinguished:
1. Anthroponyms - first names, surnames, pseudonyms, nicknames and nicknames of people: Vasiliev Anastasia,
Georges Sand.2. Theonyms - names and names of deities: Zeus, Buddha.
3. Zoonyms - nicknames and nicknames of animals: dog Barbos, cat Marie.
4. All types of place names - geographical names, cities (Volgograd), reservoirs (Baikal), streets (Pushkina) and more.
5. Aeronautonyms - the name of various space and aircraft: the Vostok spacecraft, the Mir interorbital station.
6. Names of works of art, literature, cinema, television programs: “Mona Lisa”, “Crime and Punishment”, “Vertical”, “Jumble”.
7. Names of organizations, sites, brands: “Oxford”, “Vkontakte”, “Milavitsa”.
8. Names of holidays and other social events: Christmas, Independence Day.
9. Names of unique natural phenomena: Hurricane Isabelle.
10. Names of unique buildings and objects: Rodina Cinema, Olimpiysky Sports Complex.
Converting proper to common nouns and vice versa
Since the language is not something abstracted and is constantly influenced by both external and internal factors, words often change their rank: proper ones turn into common nouns, and common nouns turn into proper nouns. Examples of this are quite common. So the phenomenon of nature “frost” - from a common noun turned into its own noun, the surname Frost. The process of transitioning a household word into its own is called onimization.
At the same time, the surname of the famous German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, who was the first to detect x-rays, in the spoken language of the Russian language has long turned into the name of the study of something using the radiation "x-ray" discovered by him. Such a process is called appeal, and such words are called eponyms.
How to distinguish
In addition to semantic differences, there are also grammatical ones, which make it possible to clearly distinguish between proper nouns and common nouns. The Russian language in this regard is quite practical. The category of common nouns, in contrast to their own, as a rule, takes the form of both the plural and the singular: “artist - artists”.
At the same time, another category is almost always used only in the singular: Picasso - the name of the artist, the singular. However, there are exceptions when you can use the plural nouns. Examples of this name, originally used in the plural: the village of Big Boars. In this case, these own nouns are often devoid of the singular: the Carpathian mountains.
Sometimes proper names can be used in the plural, if they denote different persons or phenomena, but with identical names. For example: There are three Xenia in our class.
How do you spell
If everything is quite simple with the spelling of common nouns: they are all capitalized, and the rest should follow the usual rules of the Russian language, then another category has some nuances that you need to know to correctly write your own nouns. Examples of misspelling can often be found not only in notebooks of negligent schoolchildren, but also in documents of adults and respectable people.
In order to prevent such errors, you should learn a few simple rules:
1. All proper names, without exception, are capitalized, especially when it comes to nicknames of legendary heroes: Richard the Lionheart. If a name, surname or geographical name consists of two or more nouns, regardless of whether they are written separately or through a hyphen, each of these words should begin with a capital letter. An interesting example is the nickname of the main villain of the Harry Potter epic - the Dark Lord. Fearing to call him by name, the heroes called the evil wizard "The One Who Cannot Be Named." In this case, all 4 words are written with capital letters, as this is the nickname of the character.
2. If the name or title contains articles, particles and other service particles of speech, they are written with a small letter: Albrecht von Grefe, Leonardo da Vinci, but Leonardo DiCaprio. In the second example, a piece of “di” is capitalized, since in the original language it is written together with the surname Leonardo DiCaprio. This principle applies to many proper names of foreign origin. In eastern names, the “beat”, “zul”, “zade”, “pasha” particles, indicating the social status, and the like, regardless of whether in the middle of the word they stand or are written in small letters at the end. The same principle applies to spelling proper names with particles in other languages. German “background”, “tsu”, “auf”; Spanish "de"; Dutch van, ter; French "des", "du", "de la".
3. The particles “San”, “Saint”, “Saint”, “Ben-” located at the beginning of a surname of foreign origin are spelled with a capital and a hyphen (Saint-Jemen); after O, there is always an apostrophe and the next letter is a capital letter (O'Henry). A piece of “Mac-” should be written as a hyphen, but often it is written together due to the approach of writing to the original: McKinley, but MacLane.
Having once dealt with this rather simple topic (what is a noun, types of nouns and examples), you can once and for all rid yourself of silly, but rather unpleasant spelling errors and the need to constantly look into the dictionary to check yourself.