Proper noun can be defined as “A name used for an individual person, place, or organization, spelled with an initial capital letter”.
Explanation
Proper noun is the noun used to name individual person, place or any organization. It is written with its first letter in capital and does not matter the place of its occurrence in the sentence.
Means, it is always written with its first letter in capital whether comes in the starting, middle or end of the sentence. In order to know the proper use of proper noun in the sentence, you need to know the difference between proper noun and common noun as many of us generally get confused between both.
Differentiating both is very clear however you need make a clear image of both in your mind in order to be sure forever. Proper noun is used to name a person, place or organization in the sentence such as Mohan, Marry, India, Germany, Kodak, Microsoft, etc.
It is necessary to write proper nouns in the sentence with capital letter. Whereas, common noun is used to name general items instead of specific ones and written with small letter if occurs in the middle or end of the sentence and capital letter if occur in the start of sentence.
We have provided below a table having very nice examples of both which will help you in understanding the difference.
Common Nouns | Proper Nouns |
restaurant | Madan Sweet, Domino’s, McDonald’s, KFC’s, etc |
cookie | Parle-G |
writer | Ravindranath Tagore |
man, boy | Mohan |
school | Delhi Public School |
teacher | Dr. Sarvapalli Radha Krisnan |
city | Delhi |
girl, woman | Radha |
country | US |
state | UP |
company | Microsoft, Maruti, Toyota, Ford, TCS, etc |
shop | Mohan’s, Sohan’s, etc |
mountain | Everest |
movie | Kahani, Titanic, PK, etc |
day | Monday, Tuesday, etc |
month | January, February, March, etc |
book | A Tale Of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, etc |
bank | ICICI, HDFC, SBI, etc |
river | Ganga, Yamuna, Triveni, etc |
There are some rules which help you in using proper nouns in the sentence without any confusion between common and proper noun.
1) Proper nouns are always written with capital letter occur anywhere in the sentence. Proper nouns are names of people, places, months, days, companies, restaurants, hotels, sports, games, industries, brands, etc. Generally, there is no any exception to this rule, however somewhere in the advertisements proper nouns may start with small letter to give them a modern look. But, it is grammatical error to start proper nouns with small letter, so you should be very clear in the exams.
For example:
2) Some proper nouns are written without the use of ‘THE’, such as we never use ‘the’ with the names of people, companies, years, languages, .
For example:
* In some cases, the full name of companies are written with ‘the’. In this case, ‘the’ becomes the part of company’s name and written with capital letter.
* In some cases, we use ‘the’ before the name of a country if it’s name includes “States”, “Kingdom”, or “Republic”.
For Example:
the United States, the USA, the US, the United States of America, the UK, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Republic of India, the French Republic, the Republic of China, etc.
3) Some proper nouns are written with the use of ‘THE’, such as we use ‘the’ for names of canals, seas, rivers, oceans, countries that have plural names, famous buildings, museums, or monuments, newspaper names, decades, clauses introduced by only, unique people or objects, etc.
For example:
It is easy to use proper nouns in the sentences once you have thorough knowledge of the rules described above. You need to be sure that you have capitalized them.
For example:
Proper noun exercise will help you in analyzing your knowledge about proper noun. Just go through all the details about proper noun provided above and check your skill by doing the exercises for proper noun. We have used proper nouns in following sentences, you need to check your skill by identifying proper noun in each sentence:
Answers: 1 – Wilson, 2 – Merry, 3 – London, 4 – Mrs. Rajni Tyagi, 5 – Smith’s Furniture, 6 – Dolphins, 7 – Emirate Airlines, 8 – Thomas Fernandis, 9 – London, 10 – Ganga, 11 – Sonam, 12 – Vivan, 13 – India, 14 – English, 15 – Nagpur, 16 – Delhi, 17 – Earth, 18 – Australia, 19 – Sunday, 20 – Vairag, 21 – Ganga, 22 – Microsoft, 23 – Mansi, 24 – Oreo, 25 – Jawaharlal Nehru, 26 – Indira Gandhi, 27 – Pineapple, 28 – Banana, 29 – Delhi Public School, 30 – Nothing.
Related Topics:
Noun
Common Noun
Compound Noun
Countable Noun
Uncountable Noun
Collective Noun
Possessive Noun
Concrete Noun
Abstract Noun
Singular Noun
Plural Noun