10 Results found for " Appendix:English_proper_nouns"

Appendix:English proper nouns

In English grammar, a proper noun is a noun having certain grammatical properties. In particular, proper nouns cannot normally be used with an article (as in *“a France” or *“the India”) or other determiner (as in *“that England” or even *“much Senegal”, though “this England” and “much of Senegal” are fine), and are not normally found in the plural (as in *“Germanys” or *“Australias”). A proper noun usually denotes a single unique entity, but the term proper noun pertains to a word's grammatical properties rather than to its meaning. "John Albert Magnus Smith" is an archetypal proper noun because it is almost always intended to refer to a specific individual. Of course, there probably have been a few persons with that exact name. Most telephone books in the English-speaking world have several "JA Smiths". "Smith", "John", "Johnny", "Crazylegs", "Newbie", "Bozo", and "that guy with the horrible green tie over by the phone there" might all be names intended to uniquely the same particular individual, as would "John A. Smith of Cedarhurst, NY.", "John Smith, US social security number 234-56-7890", or "Mr. Smith, the owner of the red Corvette formerly parked in the loading zone". All of these terms can serve as proper nouns grammatically. In English orthography, proper nouns are usually capitalized, as are many adjectives and common nouns that derive from proper nouns; for example, England (proper noun), English (adjective), and Englishman (common noun, plural Englishmen) are all capitalized. However, not all capitalized words come from proper nouns; for example, U.S. legal works sometimes capitalize the common noun state, and conversely, a number of modern corporations have chosen to brand themselves with lowercase first letters.