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

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."

Microsoft

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]

Chevrolet

(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.

Corvette

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.

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]

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:


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]

Name

Proper name (philosophy)

Aarts, Bas (2011). . Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-165047-5.

Oxford Modern English Grammar

Iverson, Cheryl, ed. (2007). (10th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517633-9.

AMA Manual of Style

Anderson, John Mathieson (2007). The Grammar of Names. Oxford University Press.  978-0-19-929741-2.

ISBN

Associated Press Stylebook (42nd ed.). The Associated Press, Basic Books. 2007.  978-0-465-00489-8.

ISBN

Binyong, Yin; Felley, Mary (1990). Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography. Beijing: Sinolingua.  978-7-80052-148-5.

ISBN

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 (246). Wiley: 62–63.

Chalker, Sylvia (1992). . In McArthur, Tom (ed.). 'The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-214183-5.

"Proper noun"

Collier, Mark; Manley, Bill (2003). How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. University of California Press.  978-0-520-23949-4.

ISBN

Dunn, Jon Lloyd; Alderfer, Jonathan K. (2006). National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. National Geographic Books.  978-0-7922-5314-3.

ISBN

Greenbaum, Sidney (1996). The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press.  978-0-19-861250-6.

ISBN

; Pullum, Geoffrey (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.

Huddleston, Rodney

Imai, Mutsumi; Haryu, Etsuko (2001). "Learning Proper Nouns and Common Nouns without Clues from Syntax". Child Development. 72 (3). Wiley: 787–802. :10.1111/1467-8624.00315. ISSN 0009-3920. PMID 11405582.

doi

Jespersen, Otto (2013) [First published 1996]. . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-66575-3.

The Philosophy of Grammar

Katz, Nancy; Baker, Erica; Macnamara, John (1974). "What's in a name? A study of how children learn common and proper names". Child Development. 45 (2). Wiley: 469–473. :10.2307/1127970. ISSN 0009-3920. JSTOR 1127970.

doi

Leech, Geoffrey (2006). A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh University Press.  978-0-7486-1729-6.

ISBN

Lester, Mark; Beason, Larry (2005). The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage. New York: McGraw-Hill.  0-07-144133-6.

ISBN

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.  978-1-139-43166-8.

ISBN

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).  978-0-203-96979-3.

ISBN

Quinn, Charles (2005). A Nature Guide to the Southwest Tahoe Basin. . ISBN 978-0-9708895-4-6.

Charles Quinn

; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; Svartvik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-51734-9.

Quirk, Randolph

Robsona, Jo; Marshalla, Jane; Pringa, Tim; Montagua, Ann; Chiatb, Shula (2004). "Processing proper nouns in aphasia: Evidence from assessment and therapy". Aphasiology. 18 (10). Taylor & Francis: 917–935. :10.1080/02687030444000462. S2CID 144541071.

doi

Valentine, Tim; Brennen, Tim; Brédart, Serge (2002) [First published 1996]. . Oxford: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-77956-7.

The Cognitive Psychology of Proper Names: On the Importance of Being Ernest

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (1993; 10th ed.). Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster.  978-0-87779-707-4.

ISBN

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.  978-0-395-82517-4.

ISBN

Wikiversity: Proper name