Is a proper name a word

«Proper name» redirects here. For more abstract semantic treatments, see Proper name (philosophy).

A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa, Jupiter, Sarah, Microsoft) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation).^[1][2][3][4] Some proper nouns occur in plural form (optionally or exclusively), and then they refer to groups of entities considered as unique (the Hendersons, the Everglades, the Azores, the Pleiades). Proper nouns can also occur in secondary applications, for example modifying nouns (the Mozart experience; his Azores adventure), or in the role of common nouns (he’s no Pavarotti; a few would-be Napoleons). The detailed definition of the term is problematic and, to an extent, governed by convention.^[5][6]

A distinction is normally made in current linguistics between proper nouns and proper names. By this strict distinction, because the term noun is used for a class of single words (tree, beauty), only single-word proper names are proper nouns: Peter and Africa are both proper names and proper nouns; but Peter the Great and South Africa, while they are proper names, are not proper nouns (though they could be said to function as proper noun phrases). The term common name is not much used to contrast with proper name, but some linguists have used the term for that purpose. Sometimes proper names are called simply names, but that term is often used more broadly. Words derived from proper names are sometimes called proper adjectives (or proper adverbs, and so on), but not in mainstream linguistic theory. Not every noun or a noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name. Chastity, for instance, is a common noun, even if chastity is considered a unique abstract entity.

Few proper names have only one possible referent: there are many places named New Haven; Jupiter may refer to a planet, a god, a ship, a city in Florida, or a symphony; at least one person has been named Mata Hari, but so have a horse, a song, and three films; there are towns and people named Toyota, as well as the company. In English, proper names in their primary application cannot normally be modified by articles or another determiner,^{[citation needed]} although some may be taken to include the article the, as in the Netherlands, the Roaring Forties, or the Rolling Stones. A proper name may appear to have a descriptive meaning, even though it does not (the Rolling Stones are not stones and do not roll; a woman named Rose is not a flower). If it had once been, it may no longer be so, for example, a location previously referred to as «the new town» may now have the proper name Newtown, though it is no longer new and is now a city rather than a town.

In English and many other languages, proper names and words derived from them are associated with capitalization; but the details are complex, and vary from language to language (French lundi, Canada, un homme canadien, un Canadien; English Monday, Canada, a Canadian man, a Canadian; Italian lunedì, Canada, un uomo canadese, un canadese). The study of proper names is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology, while a rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper names is a matter for philosophy of language.^{[citation needed]}

Occasionally, what would otherwise be regarded as a proper noun is used as a common noun, in which case a plural form and a determiner are possible. Examples are in cases of ellipsis (for instance, the three Kennedys = the three members of the Kennedy family) and metaphor (for instance, the new Gandhi, likening a person to Mahatma Gandhi).^[7][8]

Proper names[edit]

Current linguistics makes a distinction between proper nouns and proper names^[a] but this distinction is not universally observed^[12] and sometimes it is observed but not rigorously.^[b] When the distinction is made, proper nouns are limited to single words only (possibly with the), while proper names include all proper nouns (in their primary applications) as well as noun phrases such as the United Kingdom, North Carolina, Royal Air Force, and the White House.^[c] Proper names can have a common noun or a proper noun as their head; the United Kingdom, for example, is a proper name with the common noun kingdom as its head, and North Carolina is headed by the proper noun Carolina. Especially as titles of works, but also as nicknames and the like, some proper names contain no noun and are not formed as noun phrases (the film Being There; Hi De Ho as a nickname for Cab Calloway and as the title of a film about him).

Proper names are also referred to (by linguists) as naming expressions.^[14] Sometimes they are called simply names;^[14] but that term is also used more broadly (as in «chair is the name for something we sit on»); the latter type of name is called a common name to distinguish it from a proper name.^[15]

Common nouns are frequently used as components of proper names. Some examples are agency, boulevard, city, day, and edition. In such cases the common noun may determine the kind of entity, and a modifier determines the unique entity itself. For example:

• The 16th robotic probe to land on the planet was assigned to study the north pole, and the 17th probe the south pole.

(common-noun senses throughout)

• When Probe 17 overflew the South Pole, it passed directly over the place where Captain Scott’s expedition ended.

(in this sentence, Probe 17 is the proper name of a vessel, and South Pole is a proper name referring to Earth’s south pole)

• Sanjay lives on the beach road.

(the road that runs along the beach)

• Sanjay lives on Beach Road.

(as a proper name, Beach Road may have nothing to do with the beach; it may be any distance from the waterfront)

• My university has a school of medicine.

(no indication of the name of the university or its medical school)

• The John A. Burns School of Medicine is located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Proper nouns, and all proper names, differ from common nouns grammatically in English. They may take titles, such as Mr Harris or Senator Harris. Otherwise, they normally only take modifiers that add emotive coloring, such as old Mrs Fletcher, poor Charles, or historic York; in a formal style, this may include the, as in the inimitable Henry Higgins. They may also take the in the manner of common nouns in order to establish the context in which they are unique: the young Mr Hamilton (not the old one), the Dr Brown I know; or as proper nouns to define an aspect of the referent: the young Einstein (Einstein when he was young). The indefinite article a may similarly be used to establish a new referent: the column was written by a [or one] Mary Price. Proper names based on noun phrases differ grammatically from common noun phrases. They are fixed expressions, and cannot be modified internally: beautiful King’s College is acceptable, but not King’s famous College.^[16]

As with proper nouns, so with proper names more generally: they may only be unique within the appropriate context. For instance, India has a ministry of home affairs (a common-noun phrase) called the Ministry of Home Affairs (its proper name). Within the context of India, this identifies a unique organization. However, other countries may also have ministries of home affairs called «the Ministry of Home Affairs», but each refers to a unique object, so each is a proper name. Similarly, «Beach Road» is a unique road, though other towns may have their own roads named «Beach Road» as well. This is simply a matter of the pragmatics of naming, and of whether a naming convention provides identifiers that are unique; and this depends on the scope given by context.

Strong and weak proper names[edit]

Because they are used to refer to an individual entity, proper names are, by their nature, definite; so a definite article would be redundant, and personal names (like John) are used without an article or other determiner. However, some proper names (especially certain geographical names) are usually used with the definite article. These have been termed weak proper names, in contrast with the more typical strong proper names, which are normally used without an article. Entities with weak proper names include geographical features (e.g., the Mediterranean, the Thames), buildings (e.g., the Parthenon), institutions (e.g., the House of Commons), cities and districts (e.g., The Hague, the Bronx), works of literature (e.g., the Bible), and newspapers and magazines (e.g., The Times, The Economist, the New Statesman).^[17] Plural proper names are weak. Such plural proper names include mountain ranges (e.g., the Himalayas), and collections of islands (e.g., the Hebrides).^[17]

The definite article is omitted when a weak proper noun is used attributively (e.g. «Hague residents are concerned …», «… eight pints of Thames water …»).

Variants[edit]

Proper names often have a number of variants, for instance a formal variant (David, the United States of America) and an informal variant (Dave, the United States).^[11]

Capitalization[edit]

In languages that use alphabetic scripts and that distinguish lower and upper case, there is usually an association between proper names and capitalization. In German, all nouns are capitalized, but other words are also capitalized in proper names (not including composition titles), for instance: der Große Bär (the Great Bear, Ursa Major). For proper names, as for several other kinds of words and phrases, the details are complex, and vary sharply from language to language. For example, expressions for days of the week and months of the year are capitalized in English, but not in Spanish, French, Swedish, or Finnish, though they may be understood as proper names in all of these. Languages differ in whether most elements of multiword proper names are capitalized (American English has House of Representatives, in which lexical words are capitalized) or only the initial element (as in Slovenian Državni zbor, «National Assembly»). In Czech, multiword settlement names are capitalized throughout, but non-settlement names are only capitalized in the initial element, though with many exceptions.

History of capitalization[edit]

European alphabetic scripts only developed a distinction between upper case and lower case in medieval times so in the alphabetic scripts of ancient Greek and Latin proper names were not systematically marked. They are marked with modern capitalization, however, in many modern editions of ancient texts.

In past centuries, orthographic practices in English varied widely. Capitalization was much less standardized than today. Documents from the 18th century show some writers capitalizing all nouns, and others capitalizing certain nouns based on varying ideas of their importance in the discussion. Historical documents from the early United States show some examples of this process: the end (but not the beginning) of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and all of the Constitution (1787) show nearly all nouns capitalized; the Bill of Rights (1789) capitalizes a few common nouns but not most of them; and the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment (1865) capitalizes only proper nouns.

In Danish, from the 17th century until the orthographic reform of 1948, all nouns were capitalized.^[18]

Modern English capitalization of proper nouns[edit]

In modern English orthography, it is the norm for recognized proper names to be capitalized.^[19] The few clear exceptions include summer and winter (contrast July and Christmas). It is also standard that most capitalizing of common nouns is considered incorrect, except of course when the capitalization is simply a matter of text styling, as at the start of a sentence or in titles and other headings. See Letter case § Title case.

Although these rules have been standardized, there are enough gray areas that it can often be unclear both whether an item qualifies as a proper name and whether it should be capitalized: «the Cuban missile crisis» is often capitalized («Cuban Missile Crisis») and often not, regardless of its syntactic status or its function in discourse. Most style guides give decisive recommendations on capitalization, but not all of them go into detail on how to decide in these gray areas if words are proper nouns or not and should be capitalized or not.^[d]

Words or phrases that are neither proper nouns nor derived from proper nouns are often capitalized in present-day English: Dr, Baptist, Congregationalism, His and He in reference to the Abrahamic deity (God). For some such words, capitalization is optional or dependent on context: northerner or Northerner; aboriginal trees but Aboriginal land rights in Australia. When the comes at the start of a proper name, as in the White House, it is not normally capitalized unless it is a formal part of a title (of a book, film, or other artistic creation, as in The Keys to the Kingdom).

Nouns and noun phrases that are not proper may be uniformly capitalized to indicate that they are definitive and regimented in their application (compare brand names, discussed below). For example, Mountain Bluebird does not identify a unique individual, and it is not a proper name but a so-called common name (somewhat misleadingly, because this is not intended as a contrast with the term proper name). Such capitalization indicates that the term is a conventional designation for exactly that species (Sialia currucoides),^[22] not for just any bluebird that happens to live in the mountains.^[e]

Words or phrases derived from proper names are generally capitalized, even when they are not themselves proper names. For example, Londoner is capitalized because it derives from the proper name London, but it is not itself a proper name (it can be limited: the Londoner, some Londoners). Similarly, African, Africanize, and Africanism are not proper names, but are capitalized because Africa is a proper name. Adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and derived common nouns that are capitalized (Swiss in Swiss cheese; Anglicize; Calvinistically; Petrarchism) are sometimes loosely called proper adjectives (and so on), but not in mainstream linguistics. Which of these items are capitalized may be merely conventional. Abrahamic, Buddhist, Hollywoodize, Freudianism, and Reagonomics are capitalized; quixotic, bowdlerize, mesmerism, and pasteurization are not; aeolian and alpinism may be capitalized or not.

Some words or some homonyms (depending on how a body of study defines «word») have one meaning when capitalized and another when not. Sometimes the capitalized variant is a proper noun (the Moon; dedicated to God; Smith‘s apprentice) and the other variant is not (the third moon of Saturn; a Greek god; the smith‘s apprentice). Sometimes neither is a proper noun (a swede in the soup; a Swede who came to see me). Such words that vary according to case are sometimes called capitonyms (although only rarely: this term is scarcely used in linguistic theory and does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary).

Brand names[edit]

In most alphabetic languages, brand names and other commercial terms that are nouns or noun phrases are capitalized whether or not they count as proper names.^{[citation needed]} Not all brand names are proper names, and not all proper names are brand names.

• Microsoft is a proper name, referring to a specific company. But if Microsoft is given a non-standard secondary application, in the role of a common noun, these usages are accepted: «The Microsofts of this world»; «That’s not the Microsoft I know!»; «The company aspired to be another Microsoft.»
• Chevrolet is similarly a proper name referring to a specific company. But unlike Microsoft, it is also used in the role of a common noun to refer to products of the named company: «He drove a Chevrolet» (a particular vehicle); «The Chevrolets of the 1960s» (classes of vehicles). In these uses, Chevrolet does not function as a proper name.^[24]
• Corvette (referring to a car produced by the company Chevrolet) is not a proper name:^[f] it can be pluralized (French and English Corvettes); and it can take a definite article or other determiner or modifier: «the Corvette«, «la Corvette«; «my Corvette«, «ma Corvette«; «another new Corvette«, «une autre nouvelle Corvette«. Similarly, Chevrolet Corvette is not a proper name: «We owned three Chevrolet Corvettes.» It contrasts with the uncapitalized corvette, a kind of warship.

Alternative marking of proper names[edit]

In non-alphabetic scripts, proper names are sometimes marked by other means.

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, parts of a royal name were enclosed in a cartouche: an oval with a line at one end.^[26]

In Chinese script, a proper name mark (a kind of underline) has sometimes been used to indicate a proper name. In the standard Pinyin system of romanization for Mandarin Chinese, capitalization is used to mark proper names,^[27] with some complexities because of different Chinese classifications of nominal types,^[g] and even different notions of such broad categories as word and phrase.^[29]

Sanskrit and other languages written in the Devanagari script, along with many other languages using alphabetic or syllabic scripts, do not distinguish upper and lower case and do not mark proper names systematically.

Acquisition and cognition[edit]

There is evidence from brain disorders such as aphasia that proper names and common names are processed differently by the brain.^[30]

There also appear to be differences in language acquisition.
Although Japanese does not distinguish overtly between common and proper nouns, two-year-old children learning Japanese distinguished between names for categories of object (equivalent to common names) and names of individuals (equivalent to proper names): When a previously unknown label was applied to an unfamiliar object, the children assumed that the label designated the class of object (i.e. they treated the label as the common name of that object), regardless of whether the object was inanimate or not. However, if the object already had an established name, there was a difference between inanimate objects and animals:

• for inanimate objects, the children tended to interpret the new label as a sub-class, but
• for animals they tended to interpret the label as a name for the individual animal (i.e. a proper name).^[31]

In English, children employ different strategies depending on the type of referent but also rely on syntactic cues, such as the presence or absence of the determiner «the» to differentiate between common and proper nouns when first learned.^[32]

See also[edit]

• Name
• Proper name (philosophy)

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Aarts, Bas (2011). Oxford Modern English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-165047-5.
• Iverson, Cheryl, ed. (2007). AMA Manual of Style (10th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517633-9.
• Anderson, John Mathieson (2007). The Grammar of Names. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929741-2.
• Associated Press Stylebook (42nd ed.). The Associated Press, Basic Books. 2007. ISBN 978-0-465-00489-8. ^{[needs update]}
• Binyong, Yin; Felley, Mary (1990). Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography. Beijing: Sinolingua. ISBN 978-7-80052-148-5.
• Burridge, Kate (November 2002). «New Standards in a Glorious Grammar: Review of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds)». Australian Book Review. Wiley (246): 62–63.
• Chalker, Sylvia (1992). «Proper noun». In McArthur, Tom (ed.). ‘The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-214183-5.
• Collier, Mark; Manley, Bill (2003). How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23949-4.
• Dunn, Jon Lloyd; Alderfer, Jonathan K. (2006). National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. National Geographic Books. ISBN 978-0-7922-5314-3.
• Greenbaum, Sidney (1996). The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861250-6.
• Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
• Imai, Mutsumi; Haryu, Etsuko (2001). «Learning Proper Nouns and Common Nouns without Clues from Syntax». Child Development. Wiley. 72 (3): 787–802. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00315. ISSN 0009-3920. PMID 11405582.
• Jespersen, Otto (2013) [First published 1996]. The Philosophy of Grammar. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-66575-3.
• Katz, Nancy; Baker, Erica; Macnamara, John (1974). «What’s in a name? A study of how children learn common and proper names». Child Development. Wiley. 45 (2): 469–473. doi:10.2307/1127970. ISSN 0009-3920. JSTOR 1127970.
• Leech, Geoffrey (2006). A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-1729-6.
• Lester, Mark; Beason, Larry (2005). The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-144133-6.
• Neufeldt, Virginia (1991). Webster’s new world dictionary of American English. 3rd college edition. New York: Prentice Hall. 013949314X.
• Packard, Jerome L. (2000). The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-43166-8.
• Pei, Mario A.; Gaynor., Frank (1954). A dictionary of linguistics. OxfordNew York: Philosophical Library.
• Po-Ching, Yip; Rimmington, Don (2006). Chinese: An Essential Grammar (2nd ed.). Oxford: Taylor & Francis (Routledge). ISBN 978-0-203-96979-3.
• Quinn, Charles (2005). A Nature Guide to the Southwest Tahoe Basin. Charles Quinn. ISBN 978-0-9708895-4-6.
• Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartvik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-51734-9.
• Robsona, Jo; Marshalla, Jane; Pringa, Tim; Montagua, Ann; Chiatb, Shula (2004). «Processing proper nouns in aphasia: Evidence from assessment and therapy». Aphasiology. Taylor & Francis. 18 (10): 917–935. doi:10.1080/02687030444000462. S2CID 144541071.
• Valentine, Tim; Brennen, Tim; Brédart, Serge (2002) [First published 1996]. The Cognitive Psychology of Proper Names: On the Importance of Being Ernest. Oxford: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-77956-7.
• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1993; 10th ed.). Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. ISBN 978-0-87779-707-4.
• Online Dictionary of Language Terminology [ODTL]. Steeves, Jon (ed.). http://www.odlt.org.
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000; 4th ed.). Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-82517-4.

External links[edit]

• Wikiversity:Proper name

It is common currency among vocabulary researchers of English as a second language (L2) that L2 readers can identify and understand proper names in context (e.g. Hirsh & Nation, Reference Hirsh and Nation1992; Hu & Nation, Reference Hu and Nation2000; Nation, Reference Nation2006; Webb & Rodgers, Reference Webb and Rodgers2009; Horst, Reference Horst2013; Webb & Macalister, Reference Webb and Macalister2013). A proper name is a word or groups of words used to refer to an individual person (actual or potential), place, or organisation; in English, proper names are marked by an initial capital letter (Proper noun, n.d.). It is assumed that the form (initial capital letter) and the function of the name (context) will signal to the reader that the item is a proper name (Hirsh & Nation, Reference Hirsh and Nation1992). On the surface, this seems like a reasonable assumption to make. Indeed, many L2 learners of English possess the declarative knowledge that English names of people, places, companies and products require an initial capital letter.

It has also been suggested that proper names will have been learnt in the first language (L1), and therefore can be treated as world knowledge (Hwang & Nation, Reference Hwang and Nation1989). This assumption that proper names are low-burden items for L2 readers has led to a standard practice in L2 vocabulary research to treat proper names as known vocabulary (see Brown (Reference Brown2010) for an overview of proper name treatment in text coverage count research). More recently, some researchers have begun to eliminate proper names altogether from lexical analyses (e.g. Uden, Schmitt, & Schmitt, Reference Uden, Schmitt and Schmitt2014), a practice that seems to suggest that proper names play no role in reading comprehension.

Research is limited as to how L2 readers respond to proper names when reading continuous text, and it is not known if comprehension is adversely affected by unfamiliar proper names. Only one study (Kobeleva, Reference Kobeleva2012) (that this author is aware of) has looked at the effect of proper names on comprehension and that study looked at listening comprehension, not reading comprehension. Kobeleva (Reference Kobeleva2012) compared L2 listening comprehension of news stories in two conditions, Names Known (i.e. pre-taught) and Names Unknown (i.e. unfamiliar). Detailed comprehension was better in the Names Known condition. Participants in the Names Unknown condition mistook proper names for common nouns. They also self-reported lower comprehension and rated the tasks as more difficult than participants in the Names Known condition. These findings indicate that proper names may have an effect on detailed comprehension and affective factors, and hence, there are possible implications for L2 reading as well.

What Makes Something a Proper Name?

Updated on February 23, 2019

A proper name is a noun or noun phrase that designates a particular person, place or object, such as George Washington, Valley Forge, and the Washington Monument. A common noun, on the other hand, is not a particular place or thing, such as a president, a military encampment, or a monument. Proper names are uppercase in English.

Types of Proper Names

Tim Valentine, Tim Brennen, and Serge Bredart discussed proper names in «The Cognitive Psychology of Proper Names» (1996). Here are some of their thoughts.

«Following linguists’ definitions, we will take proper names as names of unique beings or things. These include:

• Personal names (surnames, first names, nicknames, and pseudonyms)
• Geographical names (names of cities, countries, islands, lakes, mountains, rivers and so forth)
• Names of unique objects (monuments, buildings, ships or any other unique object)
• Names of unique animals (e.g. Benji or Bugs Bunny)
• Names of institutions and facilities (cinemas, hospitals, hotels, libraries, museums or restaurants)
• Names of newspapers and magazines
• Names of books, musical pieces, paintings or sculptures
• Names of single events (e.g. Kristallnacht)

«Temporal names like names of days of the week, months, or recurrent festive days will not be seen as true proper names. The fact that there is one Monday each week, one month of June and one Good Friday each year suggests that ‘Monday,’ ‘June’ and ‘Good Friday’ do not really designate unique temporal events but rather categories of events, and therefore are not true proper names.»

Bill Bryson on the Lighter Side of Place Names in Britain

Bill Bryson, a humorous writer of nonfiction who was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but decamped to Britain in 1977, then returned to New Hampshire for a time, has now returned to Britain. Here he talks about funny names in Britain in a way that only he can. This is an excerpt from Bryson’s «Notes From a Small Island» from 1996.

«There is almost no area of British life that isn’t touched with a kind of genius for names. Select any area of nomenclature at all, from prisons (Wormwood Scrubs, Strangeways) to pubs (the Cat and Fiddle, the Lamb and Flag) to wildflowers (stitchwort, lady’s bedstraw, blue fleabane, feverfew) to the names of soccer teams (Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa, Queen of the South) and you are in for a spell of enchantment.»

• «But nowhere, of course, are the British more gifted than with place names. Of the 30,000 named places in Britain a good half, I would guess, are notable or arresting in some way. There are villages that seem to hide some ancient and possibly dark secret (Husbands Bosworth, Rime Intrinseca, Whiteladies Aston) and villages that sound like characters from a bad 19th-century novel (Bradford Peverell, Compton Valence, Langton Herring, Wootton Fitzpaine). There are villages that sound like fertilizers (Hastigrow), shoe deodorizers (Powfoot), breath fresheners (Minto), dog food (Whelpo), toilet cleansers (Potto, Sanahole, Durno), skin complaints (Whiterashes, Sockburn), and even a Scottish spot remover (Sootywells). There are villages that have an attitude problem (Seething, Mockbeggar, Wrangle) and villages of strange phenomena (Meathop, Wigtwizzle, Blubberhouses). There are villages without number whose very names summon forth an image of lazy summer afternoons and butterflies darting in meadows (Winterbourne Abbas, Weston Lullingfields, Theddlethorpe All Saints, Little Missenden). Above all, there are villages almost without number whose names are just endearingly inane—Prittlewell, Little Rollright, Chew Magna, Titsey, Woodstock Slop, Lickey End, Stragglethorpe, Yonder Bognie, Nether Wallop, and the practically unbeatable Thornton-le-Beans. (Bury me there!).»

This original article about proper names focuses on the following questions:

• What distinguishes proper names from common nouns?
• Is there such a thing as proper names at all?

This article is English-centric, focusing on English proper names, and makes use of the English use of definite and indefinite articles, «the», «a» and «an». Nonetheless, some of the deliberations may apply to other languages as well.

This article is in part philosophical, in part linguistic. A learner of English will find something of interest here, while probably finding some of the deliberations uninteresting since too philosophical and impractical.

Distinguishing proper names from common nouns[edit | edit source]

The one key distinguishing feature is that proper names refer to individual referents by acts of christening. By contrast, common nouns refer to concepts by (often historically untraceable) acts of christening, and to individual referents by invoking concepts that apply to them. Thus, the referents of a single sense of a common noun have something in common other than «being called X»; they have the concept that applies to them in common, the concept named by the noun. Put differently, proper names are names of individual entities while common nouns are names of concepts. For a common noun to refer to an individual referent, it needs an article. (A concept is also an individual entity in the class of concept, but the distinction still holds true.) That is at least how it works for countable common nouns; the case of uncountable common nouns is a bit different.

To learn about the meaning of a countable common noun, one can be given examples of its referents and then extrapolate from there. If one has seen some cats, one can recognize a new individual entity that one has not yet seen as a cat. For a common noun such as Peter or London, there is no such extrapolation: each additional Peter or London only shares the name with the other instances.

The singularity of reference is a relevant yet inconclusive test. Arguably, the universe, the earth, the moon, and the sun are not proper names; they are common nouns referring to singleton classes or concepts. Many grammarians disagree, hence the capitalization of these. Proper nouns generally refer to multiple referents («Peter», «London») so the test is unclear without further elucidation. Singularity of reference is present in the names of qualities («blueness») and the names of substances («gold»).

Capitalization a relevant yet inconclusive test. In English, adjective «English», common noun «Englishman», adjective «Darwinian» and common noun «Darwinian» are capitalized. Capitalization does have some value in that once something is considered to be a proper noun, it gets capitalized. Thus, capitalization is a hint, albeit an inconclusive one.

Proper names are usually taken to refer to concrete objects, especially people, places, and organizations but also less concrete objects such as events. Names of chemical elements are not considered to be proper names. Names of qualities (e.g. «blueness») are not proper names.

Existence of proper names[edit | edit source]

Some raise doubt about whether there is such a thing as proper names. This is caused by definitional and demarcation difficulties. As a general note, there is only one true definition, the mathematical definition. Everything else is the dirty empirical world. Definitions outside of mathematics often leave edge cases undecided and linguistics is no exception.

English proper names have some striking grammatical properties: «The man called» vs. «Peter called» and «I arrived at the city» vs. «I arrived at London». There is no article. Yes, some proper names do take an article, but that does not detract from the observation. Yes, «Peter» can be used as a common noun meaning «A person named ‘Peter'», but that does not diminish there being a proper name «Peter».

Yes, ranking names of languages as proper names seems somewhat arbitrary; non-English linguistic traditions often do not do it. One can claim languages to be like substances, such as wood, not concrete objects, and sentences being made from languages as if chair from wood.

Yes, ranking names of weekdays as proper nouns seems somewhat arbitrary; non-English linguistic traditions often do not do it.

Yes, it is not entirely clear why names of taxa are considered to be proper names.

But there is no doubt «Peter» and «London» are proper names. Even «Hague» with its «The» is a proper name; things would be easier without the «the» anomaly, but they aren’t. As a general principle, a language shows remarkable order or regularities, without which it would not fit into the fairly small human mind. However, a language also usually contains a heavy dose of chaos or irregularities or anomalies. Anomalies do not refute the order; they are just anomalies. «The Hague» is one such anomaly. For each language, one can think of an ideal language resulting from removal of the anomalies. The ideal or idealized version can be described more compactly than the actual empirical version with all its elements of chaos. Thus, the ideal English would have «Hague» rather than «the Hague».

Name vs. proper name[edit | edit source]

Generally, name is a broader term than proper name; see also section Distinguishing proper names from common nouns.

Names that are not proper names include the names of chemical elements (e.g. «helium»), the names of other chemical substances (e.g. «citric acid») and vernacular names in biology (e.g. «fly agaric»).

The relationship between name and noun seems in part unclear. For one thing, by one common construction, noun refers to a single word, whereas name can refer to a multi-word phrase. However, are e.g. «tree», «animal» and «sky» names of something? Are these words names of classes or concepts? But are these words names (as classes, not roles, that is, not names of) in that, would one say ‘»tree» is a name’? What about «the world»? One contrast is that the word name is often used to refer to a role in a relationship, that is, the name of X, whereas there is no the noun of X.

Multiple terms are formed as phrases using name but not noun, including chemical name, personal name, first name and vernacular name.

Further reading:

• Wikipedia: Name
• Wikipedia: Common name
• Wikisource: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Name

Cases[edit | edit source]

In the following, cases or groups of names are considered, whether because they are considered edge cases or whether they seem to deserve separate consideration for other reasons.

The world, the earth, the sun, and the moon[edit | edit source]

The phrases «the world», «the earth», «the sun», and «the moon» can be analyzed as definite descriptions (see below) rather than proper nouns. Thus, the fact that a noun such as «sun» has only a single referent does not automatically make it a proper noun rather than a common noun.

This is especially clear if we consider possible worlds. Thus, in a possible world, the earth can have multiple moons, in which case the phrase «the moon» fails to refer due to the use of the definite article. The fact that we can think like that shows that «moon» refers to a concept or class rather than an individual thing; it is «the moon» that refers to an individual thing, being a definite description using the definite article «the».

Analyzing the phrase «the sun» in a way similar to «the moon» above may be a bit tricky if we assume that each planet including the earth moves around a single sun. However, we do not need to assume the modern worldview, and assume a naive phenomenological worldview instead. Thus, instead of defining «sun» as «mass of gas such and such», we use the phenomenological definition «that which reveals itself as a moving very bright full circle on the sky that gets out of view during the night». Assuming we do not know the nature of that thing that reveals itself, and that it is possibly some kind of object (or even a negative object like a hole) moving around the earth, it is possible to think of a possible world in which multiple objects (possibly negative objects) reveal themselves as a bright full circle moving across the sky. Given this concept of sun, the singularity of sun is no longer necessary across possible worlds, and «the sun» actually referring to something (that is, there being only one thing that reveals itself as such and such) is contingent on this world and similar worlds; thus, «sun» is a concept or a class, possibly non-singleton one, and «the sun» is a definite description.

Multiple analysts reject the above analysis, leading to the capitalization conventions «the Sun», «the Earth», «the Moon», etc. For astronomy, it has practical purpose, since e.g. the concept of moon is extended beyond «that which reveals itself as a certain pattern of light in the sky of the earth» to something like «that which resembles the earth’s moon in some essential characteristics, namely by being a non-star that moves around a planet» or something of the sort. Even so, the phrase «the moon» could be taken to refer by default to the earth’s moon, but if a text were dealing with, say, Jupiter’s moon, the text would want to use the phrase «the moon» to refer to any moon previously picked by context and stored in an analogue of register for «moon». That is, the phrase «the moon» would refer to any individual moon that has been placed into a register associated with the concept or class of moon. However, one could still argue that this does not make the phrase «the moon» a proper noun, but rather that the register of the class of moon defaults to the earth’s moon. Alternatively, there could be two kinds of registers, a global register and a local register. The global register for the class of moon would be always non-empty whereas the local register would be sometimes empty. The phrase «the moon» would pick the local register if non-empty, or the global register if the local one is empty. Whether this speculative theory is correct is unclear.

Names of languages[edit | edit source]

In English, single-word names of languages («English», «Spanish») are usually considered to be proper names. They are capitalized and used with no articles. By contrast, the phrase «the English language» is not a proper name but rather a definite description pointing to the same referent as the proper noun «English». Moreover, the phrase «English language» (without the definite article) is a common-noun description, not a definite description, referring to «any of possibly multiple languages spoken by the English»; if the English (people) turn out to speak a single language, the definite description «the English language» succeeds in referring to something.

Non-English languages often rank names of languages (e.g. «English» or «Spanish») as common nouns, and write them in lowercase accordingly. Having English and non-English classification language-specific and thereby inconsistent in a multi-lingual dictionary is tolerable.

One could argue that English language name «English» is in fact a common noun, and that one should not be deceived by the capitalization and the lack of article. Since, «Englishman» is a common noun despite being capitalized, so the capital letter could be signaling honor or importance rather than indicating a proper name; as for the lack of article, gold uses no article either. One could argue that a language, an entity with no particular location given a point in time, is something like a substance from which sentences are made, and thus is like gold in some regards. This does not seem to be the standard analysis for English.

Names of weekdays[edit | edit source]

English treats names of weekdays (Monday, Tuesday, etc.) as proper names, by capitalizing them, and by using no article with them, as in «Today is Monday». If, by contrast, «Monday» referred to «any day having the rank 1 in a certain periodical numbering scheme of days» as if a common noun, events would take place «on a Monday», with the indefinite article «a». That it is not so seems peculiar from the etymology or morphology of «Monday», since the «day» part suggests «Monday» is some kind of day. «Monday» does not refer to any one particular day (there are multiple days such that each of them is Monday), so what does it refer to? Does it refer to a discontiguous assemblage of days that is a single object? If so, why shall we say «Today is Monday» rather than «Today is part of Monday»? Something strange seems to be going on here.

Non-English languages often rank names of weekdays (Monday, Tuesday, etc.) as common nouns, and write them in lowercase accordingly.

Some of the quandaries pointed out for English seem to apply to other languages as well, e.g. Czech. Thus, in Czech, there is pondělí (Monday), uncountable, and pondělek (a Monday), countable. By being uncountable, pondělí behaves a bit like English «Monday», although Czech has no definite and indefinite articles.

Having English and non-English classification language-specific in a dictionary and thereby inconsistent is tolerable.

Names of taxa[edit | edit source]

Binomial names of biological taxa, e.g. Amanita muscaria, are classified as proper names in Wiktionary. They show singularity of reference and lack of article, but so do names of chemicals. By contrast, «fly agaric» is a vernacular name and a common noun, possibly taking an indefinite article. Present e.g. in the sentence «Amanita muscaria is a gilled mushroom; […]», Amanita muscaria is used without an article and refers to the taxon rather than an individual organism with a location given a time point. What makes it a proper name is not wholly clear.

Further reading:

• Wikipedia: Binomial nomenclature
• Are species names proper names? by Richard J. Jensen, 2011

Names of principles[edit | edit source]

If principles, theorems and laws are abstract objects, their names are not proper nouns. One has to admit they result from christening an individual entity, even if an abstract one.

One example is «Pythagorean theorem». It is not capitalized as a proper name: that would have been «Pythagorean Theorem» with capital T. However, it is in fact often capitalized as «Pythagorean Theorem» with capital «T» as per Google Ngram Viewer. It very often uses the definite article «the», being written as «the Pythagorean [tT]heorem».

Many such entries are tracked as proper names in Wiktionary.

Names of games[edit | edit source]

Names of board games and card games are often written in lowercase as if common nouns, e.g. chess, go, blackgammon, whist or poker. They take no definite article. This seems to match a somewhat similar case, the name of a sport, tennis or basketball. These names refer, on one hand, to a type of activity, and on the other hand, to a set of rules governing the activity. The activity type is defined by the rules. There is perhaps some similarity between the referents of these names and substances such as gold. However, proprietary modern non-traditional board games and card games are often named by capitalized names, and so are computer games. The capitalization suggests these are considered to be proper names. The treatment seems to be somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent, failing the notion that proper-name-hood can be determined mostly with the use of the ontology of the referent and the manner of reference. On the other hand, some games seem to bear some similarity to an artistic work such as a literary work, a painting, a piece of music or a movie; and names of these are proper names. The ontology depends in part on how narrowly one construes a particular computer game, e.g. whether one considers particular artwork and music as defining, or only the game play, and on what level of abstractness one considers the game play. The games written in lowercase are usually somewhat traditional, have fairly compact or small rules, and do not feature specific artwork, whether visual, auditory or textual.

Names of dances[edit | edit source]

Names of dances such as the waltz or the quadrille are usually taken to be common nouns, despite the singularity of reference. Unlike substance gold, they often use the definite article. Like gold and unlike people and places, a dance has no particular location at a given point in time, being excluded from this class of prototypical referents of proper names. The names of dances are usually also used to refer to pieces of music matching the dance.

Names of works[edit | edit source]

Names of particular novels, poems, pieces of music, paintings, sculptures, movies and computer games are usually considered to be proper names. Their referents do not belong to the most prototypical group of referents of proper names, which are the referents that have a particular location given a particular point of time. Considering novels, each novel can be thought of as an abstract object existing not only in the empirical world but also in the Borgessian library of all possible novels. For novels, it is a particular printed copy of a novel that has a location given a point in time, while the novel itself does not; yet the name refers to a novel, not to its printed copy.

Names of organizations[edit | edit source]

Names of particular organizations including companies are usually considered to be proper names. Their referents do not belong to the most prototypical group of referents of proper names, which are the referents that have a particular location given a particular point of time. Since, in general, an organization is scattered across various sites and locations (as for its buildings), and the employees and agents are scattered as well.

Names of substances[edit | edit source]

Names of substances such as gold or carbon dioxide are usually considered to be common nouns, despite the singularity of reference. The idea of singularity of reference is obtained by the notion that, say, gold is a single object discontiguously scattered across the world. In any case, gold and carbon dioxide are uncountable and take no definite article.

Names of qualities[edit | edit source]

Names of qualities such as blueness are considered to be common nouns, despite the singularity of reference. Qualities are abstract objects; in particular, they have no location given a point in time. Their names are usually derived from the corresponding adjectives.

Names of people[edit | edit source]

Names of particular people are proper names.

That includes names that refer to multiple people such as first name Martina; what is decisive is that what various referents of Martina have in common is above all the name and not much else. In case of Martina, some intensional characteristics are part of the name, making the matter more complicated: 1) any referent is a human, and 2) any referent is a female.

The case of surnames is similar to that of first names. From the surname one knows the referent is a human. In some non-English languages, the surname form indicates whether the referent is a male or a female, making the surnames behave even more like the first names.

Multi-word names of people such as Albert Einstein have even more appearance of being proper names than first names and surnames, by having a reduced set of referents and by being less often used in a plural. The set of referents can still feature multiple referents. Again, what the referents have in common is above all the multi-word name, and then being a human and the particular sex or gender indicated by the name.

Names of astronomical objects[edit | edit source]

Names of particular astronomical objects such as stars are proper names. Stars are among the prototypical referents of proper names, having a definite location given a point in time.

Further reading:

• Wikipedia:List of proper names of stars
• Naming Stars, iau.org

Brand names[edit | edit source]

Brand names are proper names. Thus, they are words or word sequences. They do not need to start to be used as common nouns in order to become proper names; they are proper names automatically, as if by definition.

Some general dictionaries include brand names. According to brandingstrategyinsider.com, these include Webster’s New World, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, and Random House Unabridged Dictionary.

Further reading:

• When Trademarks And Dictionaries Clash — Branding Strategy Insider by Steve Rivkin, brandingstrategyinsider.com

Capitalization of proper names[edit | edit source]

We already noted that, in English, proper names are capitalized. At the same time, some words that are not proper names are capitalized as well, e.g. the countable common noun Englishman, the adjective Orwellian or the countable common noun Darwinian.

In many non-English languages using the Latin script (e.g. Spanish) or the Cyrillic script (e.g. Russian), proper names are capitalized as well. One may consult Wiktionary London entry to get an idea. In German, all nouns are capitalized, so capitalization is not specific to proper names. In Pinyin romanization of Chinese, proper names are capitalized.

In English, multi-word proper names are capitalized using the title case, most words being capitalized rather than only the first word. Thus, there is a work named Much Ado About Nothing (all words capitalized) rather than Much ado about nothing (only the first word capitalized). An inspection of Wikidata item Much Ado About Nothing reveals that many alphabetic-script languages only capitalize the first word of the proper name.

Further reading:

• Basic Rules of Hanyu Pinyin Orthography (Summary), pinyin.info

Proper name definitions[edit | edit source]

A definition or quasi-definition of a particular proper name can be one of the following:

• A quasi-definition stating the function of the name, e.g. «first name» or «surname». That is not a definition proper: it does not provide any guide on how to get to the referents of the name and it names the name itself, not what it refers to.
• A common-noun-like definition in the form of a definite description, e.g. «the capital of the U.K.». For each proper name, there is a host of common-noun-like definitions/intensions that apply to it. Each such definition is necessarily wrong from Kripkean rigid-designator point of view: it states something that is not necessarily true of the referent, merely contingently so. The definitions take the Russelian point of view that interpret proper name meanings as descriptions. The definitions choose some properties to list, often partially redundant for identification purposes. The definitions are in fact short encyclopedic summaries, not definitions from a logical point of view. That is fine for the purpose of a dictionary. Interestingly, a similar situation applies to names of chemical elements. The ultimate definition of proper name X is ‘that individual entity which has been christened as X’. That, of course, is unhelpful in a dictionary.
• A common-noun-like definition in the form of an indefinite description, one starting with an indefinite article. There is something suspect about this form: proper names are supposed to refer uniquely and without ambiguity to particular individual objects, for each distinct referent, so why should there be an indefinite article? Merriam-Webster’s entry for Orinoco uses no article: «river 1336 miles (2150 kilometers) long in Venezuela flowing from the Brazilian border to the Colombia border and from there into the Atlantic Ocean through a wide delta». By contrast, AHD’s Orinoco uses an indefinite article: «A river of Venezuela flowing more than 2,415 km (1,500 mi), partly along the Colombia-Venezuela border, to the Atlantic Ocean.» It is not clear why the definition should not be reformulated as follows: «The river of Venezuela that is flowing more than 2,415 km (1,500 mi), partly along the Colombia-Venezuela border, to the Atlantic Ocean.» The definite article would suggest that the characteristics stated pick a unique object in this world. Whether they pick a unique object in all possible worlds is perhaps open to debate.

The definite vs. indefinite description quandary applies to definitions of common nouns that name individual objects as well, e.g. to the definition of mercury: why should the definition of the metal start with an indefinite article given the definition is intended to uniquely identify a particular chemical element as an individual object?

A related if somewhat tangential question is why should definitions start with an article at all, including those of common nouns. Since, if «cat» is «a domestic animal such-and-such», then «the cat over there» is «the a domestic animal such-and-such over there», a non-grammatical form via the use of «the a». The conventional indefinite article perhaps matches the conventional encyclopedic defining sentence, in which we say that «A cat is a domestic animal such-and-such» and we say that «Orinoco is a river such-and-such». Nonetheless, to match this form, we could note that the relation in the middle is not «is» but rather «is a», which would get us rid of the article, as if assigning the article to the copula.

Proper name vs. proper noun[edit | edit source]

The concept of proper name is sometimes distinguished from that of proper noun, while at other times, they are taken to be the same concept. When they are distinguished, proper noun is taken to be an phonological or orthographic word, and therefore, «London» is a proper noun while «New York» is not but is a proper name.

Pluralization of proper names[edit | edit source]

Some proper names can be pluralized, by act of which they are grammatically treated as if they were common nouns. Thus, one can use the form «Peters» to refer to multiple ‘people called «Peter»‘.

Some proper names are plural per default, e.g. the Azores (islands) and the Pleiades (stars).

Proper names vs. definite descriptions[edit | edit source]

Definite descriptions are not proper names. Thus, «the dog over there» is a definite description, uniquely identifying a referent given a context (with the use of the indexical «over there»), but it is not a proper name. «dog over there» is not a definite description, as it lacks the definite article; it is a common-noun description, possibly corresponding to multiple referents/entities. Furthermore, the phrase «the dog over there» may turn out to refer to nothing if 1) there is no dog over there or 2) there are multiple dogs over there, in which case there is no way for the definite article «the» to pick one the multiple dogs as the salient referent of the phrase.

This analysis makes it possible to analyze «the world» as a definite description, part of which is the common noun «world»; the definite article «the» indicates that there is only one thing corresponding to the common noun modified by the definite article. It would follow that neither «the world» nor «world» are proper nouns, the former being a definite description (like «the dog over there»), the latter being a common noun.

The concept of definite description is covered in the following:

• Wikipedia:Definite description
• Descriptions, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Wikisource:The Problems of Philosophy/Chapter 5 by Bertrand Russell, 1912

Proper names using the definite article[edit | edit source]

Some English proper names use the definite article «the», an example being the Hague. Some of this use seems to be a conventionalized anomaly, an aberration from the grammatical system of the language. A different case are the moon, the earth and the like analyzed in a dedicated section above.

Examples include the Hague, the Nile and the Sahara. These seem to be an anomaly to be learned as a special case, as if the tribal knowledge of the users of the language.

The definite article is often used with multi-word names whose head is a capitalized common noun, e.g. the United Nations, the Atlantic Ocean or the United Kingdom. The rationale could be that, without the definite article, the name has the appearance of being a common-noun phrase, capitalized or not.

Another case is the Philippines and its ilk. In this name, it is implied that there is a quasi-common noun Philippine (one island), and that the group of these is the plural. And since Philippine is as-if a common noun, a definite article is required to turn it into something like a proper name, or at least a definite description. Whether this analysis is correct is unclear.

The phrase the English language is capitalized as if it was a definite description, not a proper name, so that is probably what it is considered to be. And yet, there seems to be some structural similarity between this phrase and e.g. the Indian Ocean, which is capitalized as a proper name. The difference seems to be an arbitrary convention.

Further reading:

• choosing articles with proper nouns, writing.umn.edu
• Articles and Proper Nouns, web.mit.edu
• Grammar: The Definite Article (‘The’) with Names of Places (Geographic Locations), englishcurrent.com
• The Use of Articles with Proper Nouns in English by Martin Woźnica, Bachelor Thesis
• Geographical Use of the Definite Article, The, grammarly.com

The meaning of proper names[edit | edit source]

There is some disagreement in literature on whether proper names have a meaning. What they certainly do have are referents, individual things referred to, denoted or designated.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that «Proper names are familiar expressions of natural language, whose semantics remains a contested subject.»

J. S. Mill says in Wikisource:A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive/Chapter 5: «For, as has already been remarked, proper names have strictly no meaning; they are mere marks for individual objects: and when a proper name is predicated of another proper name, all the signification conveyed is, that both the names are marks for the same object.»

As for meaning, there is a sharp contrast between e.g. proper names of places and countable common nouns, but not so sharp one between proper names of places and names of qualities such as «blueness». Since, for countable common nouns, there is the duality between the concept or class denoted and its particular instance referred to by a definite description using the countable common noun. Whereas for names of qualities, the contrast is not so sharp. In particular, «blueness» does not refer to a class of individual objects but rather to an individual object, albeit an abstract one. Thus, «blueness» would appear to be a proper name if it were not for the fact that it refers to an abstract object. Thus, if names of abstract individuals have meanings, it is not clear why names of concrete individuals have none.

Furthermore, what is referred to as meaning can sometimes be referred to as intension or Fregean sense/Sinn, although whether this mapping is perfect is uncertain. Starting from here, we may note the Fregean comparison of proper names Hesperus/Evening Star and Morning Star. These have the same referent/Bedeutung, Venus, but not the same sense/Sinn. Thus, upon Fregean analysis, these proper names do have a meaning distinct from the referent, namely the manner by which the referent is selected or cognitively accessed. Thus, one can associate a defining or essential Russellian definite description with each proper name, and that is an intensional object, a meaning-like object. And this definite description can plausibly be claimed to specify the meaning, different between Evening Star and Morning Star. It is a candidate essential definite description for one of the multiple senses (one per referent) of a proper name that one would find on the definition line in a dictionary. Thus, the denial of meaning to proper names is at least open to debate.

Further reading:

• Names in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), plato.stanford.edu

Inclusion in general dictionaries[edit | edit source]

General dictionaries often include a range of proper names, while not aiming at a comprehensive coverage of them.

• For Merriam-Webster, see Wiktionary:WT:MWO.
• For Oxford English Dictionaries, see Wiktionary:WT:OED.

Specialized proper name dictionaries[edit | edit source]

There are specialized proper name dictionaries, including dictionaries of first names, surnames and geographic names.

Dictionaries of first names and surnames:

• The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland by Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, and Peter McClure, 2016, over 45,000 entries
• Dictionary of American Family Names (1 ed.), edited by Patrick Hanks, 2003, more than 70,000 of the most commonly occurring surnames in the United States
• A Dictionary of English Surnames, by Reaney and Wilson, 2005, covers the origin and meaning of over 16,000 English surnames
• A Dictionary of First Names (2nd ed.), edited by Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges, 2006, over 6,000 names

Dictionaries of person names and place names:

• Babiniotis Dictionary of Proper Names, lexicon.gr — over 2.700 place names and personal names, Greek and foreign, ancient and modern

Gallery of proper names[edit | edit source]

Gallery of proper names to give an idea of the range:

• Place name: London, New York, the Atlantic Ocean, the Nile, the Himalayas, White House, Baker Street
• Political entity name: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Germany
• First name: Martina, Peter
• Surname: Newton, Einstein
• Multi-part person name: Albert Einstein, Karl Raimund Popper
• Nickname of a person: Governator, Orange Man
• Historical person name: Aristotle, Plato
• Regnal name: George VI
• Astronomical name: Betelgeuse, Sirius, Small Magellanic Cloud
• Language name: English, German, Spanish
• Mythological entity name: Zeus, Hera
• Work name: Lysistrata, Much Ado about Nothing, Pinocchio
• Name of a fictional character: Ungoliant, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio
• Company name: Microsoft, Google, Lufthansa
• Organization name (not company): the United Nations, the Democratic Party, Ku Klux Klan, Greenpeace
• Brand name: Kellogg’s, Audi, Sempron, Pentium
• Event name: World War I, World War II

Applications of the concept[edit | edit source]

One may ask why bother to distinguish common nouns from proper nouns and proper names rather than only use the concepts of noun and noun phrase. By abolishing the distinction, one would get rid of the philosophical and demarcation quandaries. Some applications follow:

• In lexicography, general dictionaries usually adopt the policy of excluding most proper names. Proper names are considered to be not the kind of generic tool of language that other kinds of words are.
• In spelling or orthography, someone has decided it was a good idea to capitalize proper names but not common nouns. This was implemented in English and many other languages. If one wants to implement this policy, one needs the concept of proper name. One’s capitalization choices are then in part driven by debates about whether a particular item is a proper name.
• The language learner may want to learn the intricacies specific to proper names. For instance, in German, one may learn from a teacher that while one can hear expressions like «der Martin», that is informal or incorrect since, in German, proper names are in general used without articles. The learner of English may want to pay attention to the subject of proper names, including when to use definite articles, which is semi-regular.

Further reading[edit | edit source]

• Wikipedia:Proper noun
• Wikipedia:Proper name (philosophy)
• Names, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu
• Rigid Designators, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu
• Wikisource:A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive/Chapter 5 by J. S. Mill, on whether proper names have a meaning

  «For, as has already been remarked, proper names have strictly no meaning; they are mere marks for individual objects: and when a proper name is predicated of another proper name, all the signification conveyed is, that both the names are marks for the same object.»

• Proper Names by Aaron Lamber, master’s thesis, 1997 — covers theories about proper names by Mill, Frege, Russell, Strawson and Kripke
• Proper Names: One Century of Discussion in Logica Trianguli by Uxía RIVAS MONROY, 1999

In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning, and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy. The common-sense view was originally formulated by John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1843), where he defines it as «a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about but not of telling anything about it».^[1] This view was criticized when philosophers applied principles of formal logic to linguistic propositions. Gottlob Frege pointed out that proper names may apply to imaginary and^[ambiguous] nonexistent entities, without becoming meaningless, and he showed that sometimes more than one proper name may identify the same entity without having the same sense, so that the phrase «Homer believed the morning star was the evening star» could be meaningful and not tautological in spite of the fact that the morning star and the evening star identifies the same referent. This example became known as Frege’s puzzle and is a central issue in the theory of proper names.

Bertrand Russell was the first to propose a descriptivist theory of names, which held that a proper name refers not to a referent, but to a set of true propositions that uniquely describe a referent – for example, «Aristotle» refers to «the teacher of Alexander the Great». Rejecting descriptivism, Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan instead advanced causal-historical theories of reference, which hold that names come to be associated with individual referents because social groups who link the name to its reference in a naming event (e.g. a baptism), which henceforth fixes the value of the name to the specific referent within that community. Today^[vague] a direct reference theory is common, which holds that proper names refer to their referents without attributing any additional information, connotative or of sense, about them.^[2]

ProblemsEdit

The problems of proper names arise within a theory of meaning that is based on truth values and propositional logic, when trying to ascertain the criteria with which to determine if propositions that include proper names are true or false.

For example, in the proposition Cicero is Roman, it is unclear what semantic content the proper name Cicero provides to the proposition. One may intuitively assume that the name refers to a person who may or may not be Roman, and that the truth value depends on whether or not that is the case. But from the point of view of a theory of meaning the question is how the word Cicero establishes its referent.

Another problem, known as «Frege’s puzzle», asks why it can be the case that the two names can refer to the same referent, yet not necessarily be considered entirely synonymous. His example is that the proposition «Hesperus is Hesperus» (Hesperus being the Greek name of the evening star) is tautological and vacuous while the proposition «Hesperus is Phosphorus» (Phosphorus or Eosphorus being the Greek name of the morning star) conveys information. This puzzle suggests that there is something more to the meaning of the proper name than simply pointing out its referent.

TheoriesEdit

Many theories have been proposed about proper names, each attempting to solve the problems of reference and identity inherent in the concept.

Millian theoryEdit

John Stuart Mill distinguished between connotative and denotative meaning, and argued that proper names included no other semantic content to a proposition than identifying the referent of the name and were hence purely denotative.^[2][3] Some contemporary proponents of a Millian theory of proper names argue that the process through which something becomes a proper name is exactly the gradual loss of connotation for pure denotation – such as the process that turned the descriptive propositions «long island» into the proper name Long Island.^[4]

Sense-based theory of namesEdit

Gotlob Frege argued that one had to distinguish between the sense (Sinn) and the reference of the name, and that different names for the same entity might identify the same referent without being formally synonymous. For example, although the morning star and the evening star are the same astronomical object, the proposition «the morning star is the evening star» is not a tautology, but provides actual information to someone who did not know this. Hence, to Frege, the two names for the object must have a different sense.^[5] Philosophers such as John McDowell have elaborated on Frege’s theory of proper names.^[6]

Descriptive theoryEdit

«The only kind of word that is theoretically capable of standing for a particular is a proper name, and the whole matter of proper names is rather curious.»

Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge, 1988^[7]

The descriptive theory of proper names is the view that the meaning of a given use of a proper name is a set of properties that can be expressed as a description that picks out an object that satisfies the description.
Bertrand Russell espoused such a view arguing that the name refers to a description, and that description, like a definition, picks out the bearer of the name.^[2] The name then functions as an abbreviation or a truncated form of the description. The distinction between the embedded description and the bearer itself is similar to that between the extension and the intension (Frege’s terms) of a general term, or between connotation and denotation (Mill’s terms).

John Searle elaborated Russell’s theory, suggesting that the proper name refers to a cluster of propositions that in combination pick out a unique referent. This was meant to deal with the objection by some critics of Russell’s theory that a descriptive theory of meaning would make the referent of a name dependent on the knowledge that the person saying the name has about the referent.^[2][8]

In 1973, Tyler Burge proposed a metalinguistic descriptivist theory of proper names which holds that names have the meaning that corresponds to the description of the individual entities to whom the name is applied.^[9] This, however, opens up the possibility that names are not proper, when, for example, more than one person shares the same name. This leads Burge to argue that plural usages of names, such as «all the Alfreds I know have red hair», support this view.^[2]

Causal theory of namesEdit

The causal-historical theory originated by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity,^[10] building on work by, among others, Keith Donnellan,^[11] combines the referential view with the idea that a name’s referent is fixed by a baptismal act, whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of the referent. Kripke did not emphasize causality, but rather the historical relation between the naming event and the community of speakers within which it circulates, but in spite of this the theory is often called «a causal theory of naming».^[12]

The pragmatic naming theory of Charles Sanders Peirce is sometimes considered a precursor of causal-historical naming theory. He described proper names in the following terms: «A proper name, when one meets with it for the first time, is existentially connected with some percept or other equivalent individual knowledge of the individual it names. It is then, and then only, a genuine Index. The next time one meets with it, one regards it as an Icon of that Index. The habitual acquaintance with it having been acquired, it becomes a Symbol whose Interpretant represents it as an Icon of an Index of the Individual named.» Here he notes out that the baptismal event takes place for each person when a proper name is first associated with a referent (for example by pointing and saying «this is John», establishing an indexical relation between the name and the person) who is henceforth considered to be a conventional («symbolic» in Peircean terms) references to the referent.^[13] [ «who is…a conventional….references to the referent» is grammatically incorrect, rendering the whole sentence incoherent]

Direct reference theoriesEdit

Rejecting sense-based, descriptivist and causal-historical theories of naming, theories of direct reference hold that names together with demonstratives are a class of words that refer directly to their referent.^[14][15]

In the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein also held a direct reference position, arguing that names refer to a particular directly, and that this referent is its only meaning.^[7] In his later work, however, he has been attributed a cluster-descriptivist position based on the idea of family resemblances (for example by Kripke), although it has been argued that this misconstrues Wittgenstein’s argument.^[16] Particularly his later view has been compared to that of Kripke’s own view which recognizes names as stemming from a social convention and pragmatic principles of understanding others utterances.^[17]

Direct reference theory is similar to Mill’s theory in that it proposes that the only meaning of a proper name is its referent. Modern proposals such as those by David Kaplan, which distinguish between Fregean and non-Fregean terms, the former which have both sense and reference and the latter which include proper names and have only reference.^[18]

Continental philosophyEdit

Outside of the analytic tradition, few continental philosophers have approached the proper name as a philosophical problem. In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida specifically refutes the idea that proper names stand outside of the social construct of language as a binary relation between referent and sign. Rather, he argues the proper name as all words are caught up in a context of social, spatial, and temporal differences that make it meaningful. He also notes that there are subjective elements of meaning in proper names, since they connect the bearer of a name with the sign of their own identity.^[19]

See alsoEdit

• Opaque context
• Singular term

ReferencesEdit

Further readingEdit

• Braun, David, Katz on Names Without Bearers, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 553–576
• Coates, Richard A., «Properhood» in: Language, Vol.82, No. 2 (June 2006): 356-82 doi:10.1353/lan.2006.0084
• Cipriani, Enrico. The Descriptivist vs. Anti-Descriptivist Semantics Debate Between Syntax and Semantics. Philosophy Study, 2015, 5(8), pp. 421-30

«A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about» writes John Stuart Mill in «A System of Logic» (1. ii. 5.), «but not of telling anything about it». The problem of defining proper names, and of explaining their meaning, is one of the most recalcitrant in modern analytical philosophy.

The problem of proper names

Mill’s definition is as good as any, though it is ultimately not helpful.POV-statement|date=December 2007 A proper name tells us «which» thing is in question, without giving us any other information about it. But how does it do this? What exactly is the nature of this information? There are two puzzles in particular:

#The name in some way reveals the identity of the object. An identity statement, such as «Hesperus = Phosphorus» should contain no information at all. If we understand the names, we should understand the information they carry, namely the identity of their bearers, and if we grasp their identity, we should understand automatically whether the statement is true or false. Thus the statement should not be informative. Yet it is. The discovery that Hesperus = Phosphorus was (in its day) a great scientific achievement.
#Empty names seem perfectly meaningful. Then whose identity do they reveal? If the only semantic function of a name is to tell us which individual a proposition is about, how can it tell us this when there is no such individual?

Theories of proper names

Many theories have been proposed about proper names, none of them entirely satisfactory.

Descriptive theory

The «descriptive» theory of proper names is the view that the meaning of a given use of a proper name is a set of properties that can be expressed as a description that picks out an object that satisfies the description. It is commonly held that Frege held such a view — the description being embedded in what he called the sense («Sinn») of the name. Certainly, Bertrand Russell seems to have espoused such a view in his early philosophical career ( Sainsbury, R.M., «Russell», London 1979). According to the descriptivist theory of meaning, there is a description of the sense of proper names, and that description, like a definition, «picks out» the bearer of the name. The distinction between the embedded description and the bearer itself is similar to that between the «extension» and the «intension» of a general term, or between connotation and denotation.

The extension of a general term like «dog» is just all the dogs that are out there; the extension is what the word can be used to refer to. The intension of a general term is basically a description of what all dogs have in common; it’s what the definition expresses.

The difficulty with the descriptive theory is what the description corresponds to. It must be some essential characteristic of the bearer, otherwise we could use the name to deny the bearer had such a characteristic. The objection is associated with Kripke, although philosophers such as Bradley, Locke and Aristotle had already noticed the problem.

Referential theory

Causal theory of names

The causal theory of names combines the referential view with the idea that the name’s referent is fixed by a baptismal act, whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of the referent. Subsequent uses of the name succeed in referring to the referent by being linked by a causal chain to that original baptismal act. (The theory is an attempt to explain exactly why a proper name has the referent that it actually does).

See also

* Name
* Opaque context
* Singular term

Further reading

* Braun, David, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185817 «Katz on Names Without Bearers»] , The Philosophical Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 553-576

Библиографическое описание:

Сысоева, Н. В. Some challenges of translation of proper names from Russian into English (through the example of geographical names) / Н. В. Сысоева, М. В. Куимова. — Текст : непосредственный // Молодой ученый. — 2015. — № 9 (89). — С. 1418-1419. — URL: https://moluch.ru/archive/89/18521/ (дата обращения: 14.04.2023).

Translation of proper nouns is one of the problems that a translator faces. It is certainly not a simple task as it can be problematic, rather ambiguous and occurs within a given cultural context.

A proper name is “a name for an individual person, place, or organization having an initial capital letter [4]. Proper names have no plural forms, are used without articles and do not accept restrictive modifiers [1]. Translators working with proper names are never working with just two languages, as proper names often require knowledge of other languages, in so far as they contain a considerable amount of history [2].

Generally speaking, proper names include several categories. There are names of:

—        persons;

—        companies;

—        geographical places and political subdivisions;

—        zodiac signs, etc.

Geographical names often have specific forms in other languages (exonyms), which may differ in pronunciation, spelling and morphology [3]. There is no unified scheme to translate proper names; however, there are several ways to translate names from Russian into English: transliteration, transcription and calquing.

Transliteration implies the use of transliteration tables with the Russian alphabet. Although there is a certain GOST to translate proper names, but it is not alone. There are several problems with translation of certain groups:

—        hissing sounds (zh, kh, ts, ch, sh, shch);

—        some vowels (е, ju, ja);

—        letters of –“j”, -y, hard and soft signs.

When we translate the Dnieper River, we use transliteration. There are many variants such as:

—        Dnepr;

—        Dnipr;

—        Dnipro;

—        Dniepr;

—        Dniapro or Dnyapro.

It happens because the river runs through three countries: Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, where Dnieper has a different spelling. Another example is “Крым”. It should be translated as “the Crimea” and not as “Krym”. Using transliteration, “Кольский полуостров” may be transliterated as “Kol’skij poluostrov”; however, it is traditionally translated as “the Kola Peninsula”. “Комсомольск-на-Амуре” should be transliterated as “Komsomol’sk-na-Amure”; however, it is used as “Komsomolsk-on-Amur”.

Transcription uses the sound of a word. Moreover, phonetic transcription is different from the simple writing of words and transfers the spelling rules of the source to the target language. There might be some difficulties as the same word could be pronounced differently in English. As a rule, transcription keeps the approximate historical sound in proper names.

The emphasis is often shifted in transcription. For example, Washington in Russian language has the accent on the last syllable, and Florida on the second syllable. However, in English both these place names have the accent on the first syllable.

Calquing implies translation in parts: translation of morphemes if it is a word, or translation of words if it is a word combination. For example, historically the translation of Russian suffixes “-чик”, “-щик”, “-ель” correlate with English suffixes “-ist”, “-er”, “-or”; Russian prefixes “не-”, “без-” correlate with “un-”, “non-”, “in-”, “im-”. The use of calquing is very common in borrowed words.

Calquing is often used in the translation of geographical names:

—        the Black Sea;

—        the Rocky Mountains;

—        Ladoga Lake;

—        the Pacific Ocean;

—        Saint Helena Island, etc.

On the whole, translation of proper names is complicated owing to different patterns of naming that exist in different cultures, subtle allusions hidden in proper names and language structure. Thus, when the translation of a geographical name is not available, the translator should keep the place’s name in its original language to make it recognizable.

References:

1.         Aguilera E. C. The translation of proper names in children’s literature. http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/4666.pdf (accessed April 23, 2015).

2.         Castañeda-Hernández G. Navigating through treacherous waters: the translation of geographical names // Translation journal. 2004. Vol. 8, No. 2.

3.         Nord Ch. Proper names in translations for children. Alice in Wonderland as a case in point. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2003/v48/n1–2/006966ar.html (accessed April 23, 2015).

4.         Pearsall J. Concise Oxford English dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. 1728 p.