Brighter Grammar 1 - Margaret Macaulay 1987

Lesson Four. Proper nouns

In Lesson 1 we had the words boy, girl, dog, cat. These words are nouns because they name people or animals. That is quite true; but most people (and some animals) have more than one name. The word boy means young male person - any young male person. Most boys also have their own names.

Let’s look at a family. Mr and Mrs Brown (Henry and Susan) have three sons.

Jeremy Brown is a boy. Richard Brown is a boy. Mark Brown is a boy. They are three boys. The English word that names them is boy. It is a common noun. You can use the

English common noun boy for any young male person in the world.

The words Jeremy and Richard and Mark are nouns because they name people. But they are not common nouns: you can’t use them to name any young male person. They are the special names of Mr and Mrs Brown’s sons. In grammar we call these special names proper nouns.

Mr and Mrs Green (John William and Elizabeth) have four daughters.

When we talk about the daughters, the word daughters is a common noun. When we call them girls, the word girls is a (plural) common noun. Their own names are nouns too - proper nouns. We spell these proper nouns with a capital letter: G, К, P, and A - Grace, Karen, Pauline and Anne.

Look at this map of England and Wales, On it there are seven towns (or cities), four rivers, two ranges of hills and three islands. The word town is common to all towns (that is, it can be used of all of them). The word river is common to all rivers, the word island is common to all islands.

Now, here is the same map with the special names of these towns or cities, islands, rivers, etc. These names are proper nouns in grammar.

Nouns that are the names for all people or things or places of the same kind are called common nouns.

Nouns that are the special names of people or places or things are called proper nouns.

All proper nouns begin with a capital letter. The names of days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.) and months of the year (January, February, etc.) are all proper nouns, and so should begin with capital letters.

Exercises

A Write down:

1 ten common nouns that are the names of things that you can see in your classroom (Example: blackboard).

2 ten for things used in games.

3 ten for things you can see in the town.

4 ten for things you can see in the country.

5 ten for things you can see in your home.

В Write down:

1 ten proper nouns that are the names of persons.

2 ten that are the names of places or things.

C Pick out the proper nouns in the following:

Example: Rome and Venice are cities in Italy.

Answer Rome, Venice, Italy (not cities — it is a common noun.)

1 John came to our house on Friday.

2 Mary has a birthday in October.

3 The Nile is a big river.

4 Margaret has gone to Turkey.

5 London is the capital of England.

6 The Queen Elizabeth sails from Southampton to New York.

7 Kingston is in Jamaica.

8 The White House is in Washington.

9 The Red Sea is to the east of Egypt.

10 Our plane stopped at Bahrain Airport on its way to Singapore.

D Write out the following sentences with capital letters for proper nouns and the beginning of sentences.

1 harry lives in london.

2 lima is a very fine city.

3 my brother's name is george.

4 we flew to america on an air india plane.

5 the sudan lies to the south of egypt.

6 william Shakespeare was one of england's greatest poets.

7 the nile is a longer river than the thames.

8 paris is the capital of france.

9 my birthday is on thursday, the 15th of may.

10 is delhi in pakistan or in india?

E Here is a short story. It has in it common nouns and proper nouns, but we have printed the proper nouns with a small letter. Draw a table and write the common nouns in one column, and the proper nouns (with capital letters) in another column. We have done the first sentence for you.

A visit to London

Last tuesday henry brown took his sons jeremy, richard and mark to london. They live about fifty miles from london in a small town called greenfields. They went by train. It was an electric train with eight carriages.

’Here’s a non-smoking carriage,’ mr brown said. ’There are four seats over there.’ He opened the carriage door, and they got in.

The train was a fast one. It didn’t stop at knightstown, sandfield, pursley or didcombe. But it stopped at starwood new town. Some people got off there, and a porter put some bags of letters and parcels into the van. An old lady got into the carriage. She had a bag with her name and address on it: mrs m. smith, north wood street, croydon, surrey. Ten minutes later they came into Waterloo station and very soon they were out in the busy streets.

’Come on, boys, we’ll take a bus now.’ They found a big red bus marked london bridge. ’That’s the bus we want,’ said mr brown and the boys hurried up the stairs and on to the top of the bus. As they went along, mr brown pointed out places and things for them to see. ’This is westminster bridge and there are the houses of parliament. We are crossing london’s river now, the thames, and just over there is westminster abbey.’

’What’s that monument on the bank of the river?’ asked richard.

’That’s cleopatra’s needle. It came from egypt.’

'And what’s that building in the distance with the golden cross on top?’

’That is st paul’s cathedral,’ said mr brown. ’It was built by the great architect sir Christopher wren.’

'I want to see the tower of london,’ said jeremy.

’We’ll see that after lunch,’ said his father.

’Where are we going for lunch?’ asked mark. 'I didn’t eat. much breakfast, I was too excited.’

’We’ll have lunch at a place I know in fleet street. Here it is, the Cheshire cheese. We must get off the bus here.’