Proper noun it is the one that particularizes beings, distinguishing them from their species, such as entities, countries, cities, states, continents, planets, oceans, among others. These terms are always written in capital letters.
Examples of Proper Nouns
1. Names of People
- the friends of Ana Beatriz they are: Paloma, Vitor, Leonardo and Rui.
- Alice you spent all afternoon thinking about your boyfriend.
- Lucas and her family went away for the weekend.
Each person's first name is written in capital letters. In the same way, surnames are also written in capital letters, for example: Rafael Silveira Andrade.
2. Entity Names
- THE United Nations Organization (UN) was created in 1945.
- O Ministry of Education (MEC) intends to reformulate the school curriculum.
- O Culture Council of the city exists since last year.
In this case, public, private, social, sporting, cultural entities are always written with a capital letter.
3. Name of Cities, States and Countries
- Lived for a long time in the city of Sao Paulo, known as the "drizzle land".
- the state of Minas Gerais is located in the southeast region of the Brazil.
- The countries that are part of Mercosur are: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.
From the examples above, we can see that the names of cities, states or countries are written with a capital letter, since they are considered proper names.
4. Name of Continents, Planets and Oceans
- THE Europe is located in the northern hemisphere, while the Africa is in the southern hemisphere.
- The planet Earth is the third closest planet to the sun after Mercury and Venus.
- The ocean Pacific separates the Asia and the Oceania of the Americas.
Likewise, continents, planets and oceans are initially capitalized.
Proper nouns and common nouns
It is important to emphasize the difference between the classifications of proper and common nouns.
- Proper nouns: indicate beings, countries, states, being written with capital letter, for example: São Paulo, Brazil.
- common nouns: spelled with lower case, designate beings of the same species (animals, plants, objects), for example, the words: city, country.
In summary, when the word is specified, it must be written with a capital letter (proper noun, São Paulo). Otherwise, it remains with the lowercase letter (common noun, city).
Classification of Nouns
In addition to being proper and common, nouns can be:
- Simple: formed by just one word, for example: car and bicycle.
- Compound: formed by more than one word, for example: wardrobe and hummingbird.
- Concrete: words that designate real concepts of people, objects, animals or places, for example: cat and table.
- Abstract: words related to feelings, states, qualities and actions, for example: love and longing
- Primitive: words that do not derive from other words, for example: leaf and rain.
- Derivative: words that derive from other words, for example: foliage and rainy.
- Collective: words that refer to a set of beings, for example: fauna and flora.
Anthroponymy and Toponymy
Emerging in the nineteenth century, the science that studies proper names is called onomastics which, from the Greek, means "the act of naming".
Onomastic is the study of proper names and their origins, being classified from two sources:
- Toponymy: branch of onomastics that studies the names of cities, locations, rivers, lakes, reliefs, geographic features, among others.
- Anthroponymy: branch of onomastics focused on research on proper names as well as surnames.
Read too:
- nouns
- classification of nouns
- Noun Exercises