nouns

Language

2022

We explain what proper nouns are and we give you examples of those they use to designate people, places, cities and countries.

People's names are an example of proper nouns.

What are proper nouns?

Words can be classified according to their purposes or uses. The nouns are the words that serve to give names to specific things of the reality, whether concrete or imaginary, large or small, or whatever their nature.

In turn, nouns can be classified according to the type of object they denote: proper nouns and common nouns. The latter designate a whole category of things, that is, they name a set of things that share certain minimal characteristics or belong to the same species.

On the contrary, proper nouns are those that designate a single particular object, serving as its proper name, and differentiating it from others that may share many of its fundamental characteristics. Our proper names are a perfect example of this.

This is easier to explain with an example: if we talk about the Moon (note the capital letter), we will be using a proper noun, since such is the name we have given to the only one natural satellite what have the Earth.

However, if we talk about the moons of jupiter, we will be referring to a whole series of natural satellites, which have with Jupiter the same relationship that our Moon has with our planet. In the latter case, we will use a common noun.

Examples of proper nouns of people

Proper names are the best example of proper nouns, whether of individuals, fictional, mystical or famous characters:

  • María, Pedro, Juan, José, Gabriel, Nicolás, Isabel, Héctor, Lorenzo, Hugo.
  • Don Quixote, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Elena of Troy, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Hercules.
  • Zeus, Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Jehovah, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo, Odin, Thor.
  • Spiderman, Ironman, Hulk, Batman, Robin, Superman.
  • Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Freud, Darwin.

Examples of proper nouns of places

In this case, we will refer to the proper names of some specific locations of the universe, real or imaginary, such as:

  • Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Mars, the Sun, the Earth, the Moon.
  • Pangea, Eurasia, Atlantis, Asia, Africa, America, Oceania, Cappadocia.
  • Narnia, Wakanda, Hogwarts, Gotham City, Metropolis, Krypton.
  • The Sahara, the Levant, the Ensanche, the Gaza Strip, the Orinoco Delta, the Yukon.
  • The Himalayas, the Andes, the Pyrenees, Siberia, Antarctica, the North Pole.

Examples of proper nouns of cities

Many cities greet visitors with their names on colorful signs.

Likewise, the names we give Humans to our cities are examples of proper, unique and unrepeatable nouns, such as:

  • Bogotá, Caracas, Cartagena, Santiago, Coimbra, Madrid, Lisbon, Detroit, Córdoba, Querétaro, Asunción, Okinawa, Moscow, Maracaibo, Barcelona, ​​Paris, Taipei, Washington.
  • La Paz, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, La Mancha, La Rioja, Las Palmas, Cairo, Santa Cruz, Havana.
  • Tenochtitlán, Tikal, Petén, Troya, Byblos, Argos, Cartago, Thebes.

Examples of country proper nouns

The same goes for the names of the countries:

  • Argentina, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Jamaica, Norway, Spain, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, China, Japan, Egypt.
  • United States, El Salvador, Burkina Faso, Georgia Islands, United Kingdom, New Guinea, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates.
  • Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Senegambia, Al-Andalus, Prussia, Transylvania.

Sentences with proper nouns

Below we will detail examples of prayers with proper nouns:

  • Maria went to the movies with Pedro.
  • Juliana went on vacation to Vietnam.
  • When we arrived in Buenos Aires, we met Gabriel.
  • The economy in Mexico it has not been going well since Donald Trump presides over the United States.
  • Yugoslavia existed as nation until the death of the dictator Tito in 1991.
  • Nobody knows what happened to the inhabitants of the ancient city of Tenochtitlán.
  • During its transit in front of Earth, Halley's Comet can be seen in its entirety.
  • Francisco is a great reader of Cervantes.
  • At the university we studied Freud's work a lot.
  • Malena likes Wagner's operas.
  • The flight will depart from Paris, make a stopover in Frankfurt and then land in Moscow.
  • My dog ​​is called Peluso and we adopted him in Córdoba.
  • I left with Oscar from Julia's party.
  • President Putin spoke out on the Crimean crisis.
  • We were in Italy for Marta's birthday.
  • Benito Juárez was born in Oaxaca in 1806.
  • The company Microsoft It was founded by Bill Gates.
  • We all know that the capital of Peru is Lima, not Callao.
  • What's wrong? You are always on the moon.
  • Hector killed Patroclus and was defeated by Achilles.

Other types of nouns

Nouns can also be classified into:

  • Concrete and abstract. The concrete ones denote an object that exists in the real plane, and the abstract ones something that exists in the plane of the ideas and the imagination. For example: "table" is concrete, while "joy" is abstract.
  • Countable and uncountable. They are countable if their number can be recorded (that is, counted) and uncountable if they have an entity that cannot be numbered. For example: "floors" is countable (one floor, two, three), while "Water" it is not.
  • Individual and collective. Individuals denote something particular, while others denote a set. For example: "bird" is an individual of a species, while "flock" is an organized set of them.
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