What Is a Noun?

The simplest words in English are nouns; they are easy to understand and found everywhere.  To understand how English is structured, start by understanding what nouns do and how to find them in sentences.

A noun is a word that names people, places, things, or ideas.

Remember that “part of speech” is what job a word is doing in a sentence.  “Naming” is a noun’s job.  All of the following words are nouns because they name someone or something:

rabbit, tangerine, paper clip, Mars, pride, student, Alaska

Most nouns are things you can see (like a mouse or the sun), but nouns can also name ideas  (like democracy or faith).

Proper Nouns

There are two types of nouns: proper and common.  Proper nouns name specific people, places, things, or ideas.  For example:

• people: Shakespeare, Jean
• places: Paris, Gresham, the South
• things: Kleenex, Geology 101, Oreos
• ideas: Buddhism, Reconstruction

Proper nouns can be more than one word, but they still name one thing. For example:

• people: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Gates, Billie Eilish
• places: New York City, Republic of Ireland
• things: House of Representatives, MacBook Pro
• ideas: Harlem Renaissance, Green New Deal

The following types of words are usually proper nouns:

• deities, religions, religious followers, sacred books (Allah, Catholic, Protestants, the Torah)
• family relationship when used as a name (Mom, Grandpa Lenz)
• nationalities, languages, races, tribes (Italian, Japanese, African American, Apache)
• educational institutions, departments, specific courses (Mt. Hood Community College, Humanities Department, Writing 115)
• government departments, organizations, political parties (Army Corps of Engineers, Doctors Without Borders, Democratic Party)
• historical movements, periods, events, documents (Black Lives Matter, the Renaissance, March Madness, Declaration of Independence)
• trade names (Apple, Xerox, Newman’s Own)
• months, holidays, days of the week–but not seasons (July, Yom Kippur, Friday, but not winter)

  Tip

  Proper nouns are always capitalized.

  Common nouns are never capitalized, unless they are the first word of a sentence.

• titles when used as part of a person’s name–but not when used alone (Governor Brown, but not the governor of Oregon)
• titles of books, movies, CDs (The Hunger Games, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Back to Black)

Common Nouns

Common nouns name general people, places, things, or ideas. For example:

• people: students, aunt, dog
• places: river, country, home
• things: aquarium, car, hamburger, rose
• ideas: democracy, love, happiness, religion

Common nouns, like proper nouns, can be more than one word, but they still name one thing.  For example:

• people: homeless person, state representative
• places: high school, swimming pool
• things: printer cartridge, washing machine
• ideas: civil rights, public speaking

Nouns of more than one word are called compound nouns.  The two words together have a meaning that is different from the two separate words.  For example, a “state” is one thing, a “representative” is another thing, and a “state representative” has a third, slightly different meaning.  Sometimes compound nouns are written as one word (“greenhouse”) or hyphenated (“mother-in-law”).  Check a dictionary to be sure.

Changing Jobs

Sometimes words can be a proper noun in one sentence but a common noun in another.  For example:

• My sister Fern prefers ferns to flowers.  (“Fern” is a proper noun because it is a specific person’s name, but “ferns” is a common noun because it names a general type of plant.)
• My mother said she was tired, but Dad was ready to go.  (“mother” is a common noun here because it names the relationship, but “Dad” is what we call him, so it’s a proper noun.)
• When Obama was President, he actually called the president of my garden club.  (“President” is only capitalized when it refers to the President of the United States, not when it refers to someone like the “president of my garden club.”)

Capitalization

Knowing what to capitalize is not difficult: there are only a few rules.

Why are rules of capitalization in a chapter about nouns?  Because one of the main ways capital letters are used is to differentiate between proper and common nouns.

Proper nouns are always capitalized.  Common nouns are not capitalized.  The following table illustrates the differences:

Besides proper nouns, there are just a few other capitalization rules:

• The pronoun “I” is always capitalized:  It’s time I settled down and found a job.
• The first word in every sentence is capitalized:  Peaches taste best when they are cold.
• The first word in a sentence-length quotation is capitalized:  The college president asked, “What can we do for our students?”
• The first, last, and main words in a title are capitalized:  I found a copy of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species at a yard sale.

That’s it.  The challenge is not understanding when to capitalize.  It’s just remembering to do it.