What is "proper noun"

Proper \Prop"er\, a. [OE. propre, F. propre, fr. L. proprius. Cf. Appropriate.]

1. Belonging to one; one's own; individual. ``His proper good'' [i. e., his own possessions].
   --Chaucer. ``My proper son.''
   --Shak.

   Now learn the difference, at your proper cost, Betwixt true valor and an empty boast.
   --Dryden.

2. Belonging to the natural or essential constitution; peculiar; not common; particular; as, every animal has his proper instincts and appetites.

   Those high and peculiar attributes . . . which constitute our proper humanity.
   --Coleridge.

3. Befitting one's nature, qualities, etc.; suitable in all respect; appropriate; right; fit; decent; as, water is the proper element for fish; a proper dress.

   The proper study of mankind is man.
   --Pope.

   In Athens all was pleasure, mirth, and play, All proper to the spring, and sprightly May.
   --Dryden.

4. Becoming in appearance; well formed; handsome. [Archaic] ``Thou art a proper man.''
   --Chaucer.

   Moses . . . was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child.
   --Heb. xi. 23.

5. Pertaining to one of a species, but not common to the whole; not appellative; -- opposed to common; as, a proper name; Dublin is the proper name of a city.

6. Rightly so called; strictly considered; as, Greece proper; the garden proper.

7. (Her.) Represented in its natural color; -- said of any object used as a charge.

   In proper, individually; privately. [Obs.]
   --Jer. Taylor.

   Proper flower or Proper corolla (Bot.), one of the single florets, or corollets, in an aggregate or compound flower.

   Proper fraction (Arith.) a fraction in which the numerator is less than the denominator.

   Proper nectary (Bot.), a nectary separate from the petals and other parts of the flower. -- Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America.

   Proper perianth or Proper involucre (Bot.), that which incloses only a single flower.

   Proper receptacle (Bot.), a receptacle which supports only a single flower or fructification.

n. A noun denoting a particular person, place, organization, ship, animal, event, or other individual entity.

n. a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized [syn: proper name] [ant: common noun]

A proper noun is a noun that in its primary application refers to a unique entity, such as London, Jupiter, Sarah, or Microsoft, as distinguished from a common noun, which usually refers to a class of entities (city, planet, person, corporation), or non-unique instances of a specific class (a city, another planet, these persons, our corporation). 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.

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. 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 noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name. Blackness and chastity are common nouns, even if blackness and chastity are considered unique abstract entities.

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, 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 an article or other determiner (such as any or another), 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 refer by having 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). Or if it had once been descriptive (and then perhaps not even a proper name at all), it may no longer be so (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, canadien; English Monday, Canada, Canadian).

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.