Learn English: Know Difference Between Common Noun and Proper Noun

A noun is a word that designates a certain person, place, object, or notion. Nouns are used to refer to both generic concepts like friends or pizza and more specific concepts like Canada or Leonardo Da Vinci. We use a lot of different nouns like these to describe the world around us. But all of the nouns we use can be separated into just two different types: common nouns and proper nouns. Today, in Classes with News18 we did take you through the differences.

What kind of thing they refer to is what separates a proper noun from a common noun. Proper nouns refer to particular objects, whereas common nouns refer to generic things. For instance, the noun country is a common noun because it refers to a general, non-specific place. On the other hand, the noun Spain is a proper noun because it refers to a specific country located in Europe (another proper noun) Common and proper nouns differ primarily in one grammatical way: proper nouns are always capitalised, whereas common nouns are only capitalised in very specific situations.

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Common nouns

As has been said, common nouns refer to generic people, places, and things. Here are some examples.

Examples of common nouns

People: man, woman, child, cop, criminal, butcher, baker, neighbor, judge, knights, bishops, kings, queens.

Places: city, town, country, neighborhoods, islands, beaches, province, state, outside, upstairs, alleys, campsites.

Things: guitar, drums, apples, trucks, knee, elbows, food, water, sky, stars, day, weeks, month, years.

Ideas, emotions, concepts: happiness, courage, questions, answers, government, chaos, hunger, loneliness, friendship, science.

Proper nouns

Proper nouns can also refer to people, places, things, and ideas. However, they  refer to more specific people and things.

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Examples of proper nouns

People: Harriet Tubman, King Richard the Lionheart, Lady Gaga, Captain Crunch.

Places: New York City, Moscow, Cairo, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Australia, Main Street,  Sahara Desert.

Things: Star Wars, Band-aids, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Apollo 13, Great Wall of China.

Most of our phrases contain both common and proper nouns. They are generally very simple to employ, but you should be sure to uppercase proper nouns consistently and only use capitalization for common nouns when necessary.

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