Dream Interpretation Udilova 

Eurasia own or common nouns. Proper and common nouns

The Russian term "common" was formed from the Old Slavonic word call- "call". In the first grammar of the 17th century, Meletius Smotrytsky designated "nominal, ordinary, ordinary" nouns. The word "naritati" in turn came from "ritzat" - to speak, and this word was formed from the ancient Slavic word "speech". Very often in old scrolls there is a phrase "I river", i.e. "I speak". Common nouns are generalized names of homogeneous objects. For example: student, teacher, ghost, entity, flower, tree etc.

The word "own" comes from the Old Slavonic property, which means "one's own", "personal", "belonging to oneself", as well as "feature, person". A proper name is a second name given to an object to distinguish it from another similar object.

1. August is the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar. It got its real name in honor of the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD), after whom the Roman Senate named the month, especially happy in the life of the emperor (Cleopatra died this month).

2. Accordion- music. the instrument was named after the Slavic storyteller Bayan (Boyan).

3. Boycott- on behalf of the manager of an Irish principality, Charles Boycott, who was distinguished by particular severity; for this, everyone turned away from him.

4. Bolivar- wide-brimmed hat of the XIX century. Named in honor of Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), leader of the struggle for the independence of the Spanish colonies in South. America. Liberated Venezuela from Spanish domination, Nov. Granada. “Having put on a wide bolivar, Onegin goes to the boulevard ...”(A.S. Pushkin, "Eugene Onegin").

5. Whatman- the type of paper is named after the English industrialist of the 18th century. J. Whatman.

6. Watt- a unit of power, named after the Scotch-Irish inventor-mechanic James Watt (Watt), the creator of the universal steam engine.

7. riding breeches- Trousers of a special cut were named after the French cavalry general Halifet.

8. Guillotine- On January 21, 1790, the French doctor J. Guillotin presented his main invention - the guillotine - a tool for execution (beheading convicts), introduced during the French Revolution.

25. Pullman - (Pullman), George, inventor of sleeping cars, 1831-1897, founder of the Carriage Society in Chicago. Pullman built wagons that starred in westerns and were considered palaces on wheels. The very word "Pullman" ("Pullman"), thanks to this, acquired its meaning - the car is extremely comfortable.

26.X-ray - a common spelling in Russian of the name of the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who discovered X-rays.

27. Saxophone- the Belgian master Sachs gave the name to the popular wind instrument.

28. french- military jacket in the waist, with four large pockets on the chest and on the sides and a tab at the back. This jacket was worn by John Denton French, who commanded the British Expeditionary Forces in France during the First World War.

29. Celsius- degrees Celsius is named after the Swedish scientist Anders Celsius, who in 1742 proposed a new scale for measuring temperature.

There are words that we use automatically in our speech, without thinking about the fact that some of them owe their origin to specific people. Of course, everyone knows that the months July and August named after emperors, lettuce Olivier salad bears the name of its creator. Here, to that category of words, some units of measurement can also be attributed, for example: volt, ampere etc.

There are many such words. For example, a shirt hoody is most directly related to the great writer - in many photographs, Lev Nikolaevich is depicted in a tight shirt loose. Many of his followers, who called themselves the writer's students and called themselves Tolstoyians, wishing to emphasize their closeness to him, often appeared in shirts similar to those worn by Leo Tolstoy. So the loose shirt became known as sweatshirt.

Word hooligan- of English origin. It is believed that the surname Houlihan was once worn by the famous London brawler, who brought a lot of trouble to the inhabitants of the city and the police. The Oxford Dictionary dates the frequent appearance of this Mr's name in police reports to 1898. The surname has become a household name, and the word is international, characterizing a person who grossly violates public order.

But what, according to some sources, is the history of the origin of the word academy. The philosopher Plato often expounded his teachings in a shady grove near Athens. According to legend, the Attic hero Akadem was buried in this grove. Therefore, the grove was called the Academy. Word first academy became the name of the school of Plato, and later - a certain type of educational institution and community of scientists.

Interesting origin of the word boycott. In the 19th century, an English earl hired a steward named Charles Cunningham Boycott for his estate in Ireland. Boycott was a harsh man, often punishing peasants and farmers, which aroused hatred on their part. People who heard about his cruelty refused to have anything to do with him, avoided communication with him. Since then, the punishment of a person by complete isolation has been called boycott.

Word mausoleum also has its own history. In 352 BC In the city of Halicarnassus (Asia Minor), King Mausolus died. According to the custom of those times, the corpse of the king was burned, and the ashes were placed in a funeral urn. According to one of the legends that have come down to us, his widow Artemisia decided to build a huge tomb and thereby perpetuate the memory of her husband, whom she loved very much. Well-known masters were involved in the construction and decoration of the structure, including the court sculptor of Alexander the Great Leohar. The tomb was as high as a ten-story building. At the top stood a gigantic statue of the Mausoleum. The tomb of Halicarnassus was named mausoleum and ranked among the seven ancient wonders of the world. ( From various etymological dictionaries and reference books).

Sometimes items get their names from the place where they were taken from: coffee(from the name of the country Kaffa, located in Africa), peach(from the name Persia - modern Iran), orange(The Dutch word appelsien literally translates as "Chinese apple"). Word trousers comes from the name of the Dutch city of Bruges.

One of the ancient legends tells about the handsome young man Narcissus, who was so in love with himself that he did not notice anyone or anything around, but all the time looked at his reflection in the water. The gods, angry, turned him into a plant. White flower daffodil leans to one side and seems to be looking down at his reflection with a yellow eye. Such plant names are also associated with ancient mythology, such as cypress and hyacinth.

Once, the son of King Keos and friend of Apollo, Cypress accidentally killed a deer while hunting - his favorite and the favorite of all the inhabitants. The inconsolable young man asked Apollo to give him eternal sadness, and God turned him into a slender tree cypress(since then, the Greeks began to hang a cypress branch at the door of the house where the deceased is). Beautiful (usually bright red) flower hyacinth named after the son of the king of Sparta, Hyacinth, who died during a discus throwing competition. Flower of sorrow hyacinth grew from the blood of Hyacinth.

One of the Slavic alphabets is called Cyrillic(by the name of one of its creators - Cyril); many names of literary movements go back to proper names: Byron - Byronism, Karamzin - Karamzinism, Petrarch - petrarchism... Adventure-rich wanderings or woeful wanderings we call odyssey(Odysseus - the mythical king of Ithaca, the hero of the Trojan War), the adventures of a hero-traveler, devoid of human society - robinsonade(Robinson is the hero of Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe").

Quite often, common names go back to the names of famous scientists and inventors. Here are some: ampere(after the French physicist Ampère), watt(after the English physicist Watt), volt(named after the Italian physicist Volta) ... The French cavalry general Galliffet invented trousers of a special cut - riding breeches, Scottish chemist Mackintosh - waterproof raincoat mac.. Colt, Maxim, Mauser, Nagant famous inventors of weapons. The Belgian master Sachs gave the name to the popular wind instrument - saxophone.

§one. General characteristics of the noun

The noun is an independent significant part of speech.

1. grammatical meaning- "thing".
Nouns are words that answer the questions:
Who? , What?

2. Morphological features:

  • constants - common noun / proper, animate / inanimate, gender, type of declension;
  • changeable - number, case.

3. Syntactic role in a sentence any, especially often: subject and object.

The kids love the holidays.

As an appeal and introductory words, the noun is not a member of the sentence:

- Sergey!- my mother calls me from the yard.

(Sergey- address)

Unfortunately, it's time to go do your homework.

(Unfortunately- introductory word)

§2. Morphological features of nouns

Nouns have a set of morphological features. Some of them are permanent (or immutable). Others, on the contrary, are non-permanent (or changeable). Unchangeable signs refer to the whole word as a whole, and changeable to the forms of the word. So noun Natalia- animated, own, female, 1 cl. In whatever form it may be, these signs will be preserved. Noun Natalia may be in the form of and many others. numbers in different cases. Number and case are inconstant signs of nouns. In the illustration, dotted lines lead to such non-permanent or variable morphological features. It is necessary to learn to distinguish which signs are permanent and which are non-permanent.

§3. Common nouns - proper nouns

This is the division of nouns according to the features of the meaning. Common nouns denote homogeneous objects, i.e. any object from their series, and proper nouns call a separate specific object.
Compare nouns:

  • child, country, river, lake, fairy tale, turnip - common nouns
  • Alexey, Russia, Volga, Baikal, "Repka" - own

Common nouns are varied. Their ranks by value:

  • specific: table, computer, document, mouse, notebook, fishing rod
  • abstract (abstract): surprise, joy, fear, happiness, miracle
  • real: iron, gold, water, oxygen, milk, coffee
  • collective: youth, foliage, nobility, spectator

Proper nouns include names of people, nicknames of animals, geographical names, names of works of literature and art, etc.: Alexander, Sasha, Sashenka, Zhuchka, Ob, Ural, "Teenager", "Gingerbread Man" etc.

§4. Animation - inanimateness

Animate nouns call "living" objects, and inanimate - not "living".

  • Animated: mother, father, child, dog, ant, Kolobok (hero of a fairy tale, acting as a living person)
  • Inanimate: orange, ocean, war, lilac, program, toy, delight, laughter

For morphology, it is important that

  • in plural in animate nouns
    Near the school, I saw familiar girls and boys (vin. pad. = born. pad.), and in inanimate nouns wine form. pad. matches the shape. pad.: I love books and films (vin. pad. = im. pad.)
  • in the singular for animate masculine nouns wine form. pad. matches the form. fall:
    The fox saw Kolobok (vin. fall. = genus. fall.), and for inanimate nouns of masculine gender wine form. pad. matches the shape. pad.: I baked a gingerbread man (wine. pad. = im. pad.)

The rest of the nouns have the form im., vin. and genus. cases are different.

Means, sign of inanimateness can be determined not only based on the meaning, but also on the set of word endings.

§5. Genus

gender of nouns is a permanent morphological feature. Nouns do not change by gender.

There are three genders in Russian: male, female and average. The sets of endings for nouns of different genders differ.
In animate nouns, the reference to the masculine or feminine gender is motivated by gender, since the words denote male or female persons: father - mother, brother - sister, husband - wife, man - woman, boy - girl etc. The grammatical sign of gender correlates with gender.
For inanimate nouns, the belonging of the word to one of the three genders is not motivated. The words ocean, sea, river, lake, pond- different gender, and the gender is not determined by the meaning of the words.

The morphological indicator of the genus is the endings.
If the ending word has:

a, u or a, oh, e in the singular and s, ov, am, s or ow, ah, ah in plural , then it is a masculine noun

a, s, e, y, oh, e in the singular and s, am or s, ami, ah in the plural, it is a feminine noun

oh, a, u, oh, om, e in the singular and ah, ah, ah, ah, ah in the plural, it is a neuter noun.

Do all nouns belong to one of the three genders?

No. There is a small group of amazing nouns. They are interesting in that they can refer to both males and females. These are the words: smart girl, glutton, sleepyhead, greedy, crybaby, ignorant, ignorant, wicked, bully, slob, wicked, muddler, slobber, daredevil etc. The form of such words coincides with the form of feminine words: they have the same set of endings. But the syntactic compatibility is different.
In Russian you can say:
She is so smart! AND: He is so smart! The meaning of the gender of an animate person can be found out by the form of a pronoun (as in our example) or an adjective, or a verb in the past tense: Sonya woke up. AND: Sonya woke up. Such nouns are called common nouns.

Common nouns do not include words that name professions. You may already know that many of these are masculine nouns: doctor, driver, engineer, economist, geologist, philologist etc. But they can designate both male and female persons. My mother is a good doctor. My father is a good doctor. Even if the word names a female person, then adjectives and verbs in the past tense can be used in both masculine and feminine: The doctor came. AND: The doctor came.


How to determine the gender of immutable words?

There are invariable nouns in the language. All of them are borrowed from other languages. In Russian, they have a gender. How to determine the genus? It's easy if you understand what the word means. Let's look at examples:

Monsieur - madam- in words denoting an animated person, gender matches gender.

Kangaroo, chimpanzee- words for animals male.

Tbilisi, Sukhumi- words - city names - male.

Congo, Zimbabwe- words - names of states - neuter.

Mississippi, Yangtze- words - names of rivers - female.

Coat, muffler- words denoting inanimate objects are more often neuter.

Are there any exceptions? There is. Therefore, it is recommended to pay attention to unchangeable words and remember how they are used. The gender is expressed not by the ending (indeclinable words have no endings), but by the form of other words that are related to the unchangeable noun in meaning and grammatically. These can be adjectives, pronouns or verbs in the past tense. For example:

Mississippi wide and full.

Short adjectives in the form of f.r. indicate that the word Mississippi zh.r.

§6. declination

declination is a type of word change. Nouns change in number and case. Number and case are variable morphological features. Depending on what forms the word has in different numbers and cases, in the totality of all possible forms, nouns belong to one of the declensions.


Nouns have three declensions: 1st, 2nd and 3rd. The vast majority of Russian nouns are nouns of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd declension. The type of declension is a constant, unchanging morphological feature of nouns.

The 1st declension includes feminine and masculine words with endings a, I in its original form.
Examples: mom, dad, grandfather, water, earth, Anna, Anya, lecture - ending [a].

The 2nd declension includes masculine words with zero ending and neuter gender with endings about, e in its original form.
Examples: father, brother, house, Alexander, sea, lake, building - ending [e] , genius, Alexey.

The 3rd declension includes null-ending feminine words in its original form.
Examples: mother, mouse, night, news, rye, lie.

initial form- this is the form of the word in which it is usually fixed in dictionaries. For nouns, it is the nominative singular form.

Pay attention to the words traditionally called nouns on ia, ie, uy : lecture, building, genius.

What is the correct ending for these words?

Do you remember that the letters I and e, which are written at the end of such feminine and neuter nouns after vowels, and the letter and - vowel represent two sounds? Lecture- [i'a], building- [i’e], and the sound [i’] is the last consonant of the base. So, in words like lecture ending [a], in words like building- [e], and in words like genius- null ending.

So the feminine nouns are: lecture, station, demonstration belong to the 1st declension, and masculine: genius and middle: building- to the 2nd.

Another group of words requires commentary. These are the so-called neuter nouns me , the words path and child. These are inflected nouns.

Inflected nouns- these are words that have endings characteristic of forms of different declensions.
There are few such words. All of them are very ancient. Some of them are common in today's speech.

List of nouns on me: stirrup, tribe, seed, burden, udder, crown, time, name, flame, banner.

For their spelling, see All spelling. Spelling of nouns

§7. Number

Number- this is a morphological feature that is changeable for some nouns and unchanged, constant for others.
The vast majority of Russian nouns change in number. For example: home - at home, girl - girls, elephant - elephants, night - nights. Nouns that change in number have both singular and plural forms and endings corresponding to these forms. For a number of nouns, the singular and plural forms differ not only in endings, but also in the stem. For example: man - people, child - children, kitten - kittens.

A smaller part of Russian nouns does not change in numbers, but has the form of only one number: either singular or plural.


Singular nouns:

  • collective: nobility, children
  • real: gold, milk, curdled milk
  • abstract (or abstract): greed, anger, kindness
  • some of their own, namely: geographical names: Russia, Suzdal, Petersburg


Plural nouns:

  • collective: shoots
  • real: cream, cabbage soup
  • abstract (or abstract): chores, elections, twilight
  • some own, namely geographical names: Carpathians, Himalayas
  • some specific (objective), watches, sledges, as well as a group of nouns denoting objects that consist of two parts: skis, skates, glasses, gates

Remember:

Most things denoted by nouns that have only the form of a singular or plural person cannot be counted.
For such nouns, the number is an invariable morphological feature.

§eight. case

case- this is a non-permanent, changeable morphological feature of nouns. There are six cases in Russian:

  1. Nominative
  2. Genitive
  3. Dative
  4. Accusative
  5. Instrumental
  6. Prepositional

You need to firmly know the case questions, with the help of which it is determined in which case the noun is. Since, as you know, nouns are animate and inanimate, there are two questions for each case:

  • I.p. - who what?
  • R.p. - who?, what?
  • D.p. - to whom; to what?
  • V.p. - who?, what?
  • etc. - who?, what?
  • P.p. - (About who about what?

You see that for animate nouns the questions of win.p. and genus. etc., and for the inanimate - to them. p. and wine. P.
In order not to be mistaken and correctly determine the case, always use both questions.

For example: I see an old park, a shady alley and a girl and a young man walking along it.
I see (who?, what?) the park(vin. p.), alley(vin. p.), girl(vin. p.), human(vin. p.).

Do all nouns change by case?

No, not all. Nouns that are called invariable do not change.

Cockatoo (1) sits in a cage in a store. I approach the cockatoo (2) . This is a big beautiful parrot. I look at the cockatoo (3) with interest and think: - What do I know about the cockatoo (4)? I don't have a cockatoo (5) . With cockatoo (6) interesting.

Word cockatoo met in this context 6 times:

  • (1) who?, what? - cockatoo- I.p.
  • (2) I approach (to) whom ?, what? - (k) cockatoo- D.p.
  • (3) look (at) whom?, what? - (to) cockatoo- V.p.
  • (4) know (about) whom?, what? -( o) cockatoo- P.p.
  • (5) no one?, what? - cockatoo- R.p.
  • (6) wondering (with) whom?, what? - (with cockatoo)- etc.

In different cases, the form of immutable nouns is the same. But the case is easily determined. Case questions, as well as other members of the sentence, help with this. If such a noun has a definition expressed by an adjective, pronoun, numeral or participle, i.e. word that changes in cases, then it will be in the form of the same case as the invariable noun itself.

Example: How much can you talk about this cockatoo?- (about) who?. how? - P.p.

§nine. The syntactic role of nouns in a sentence

The mother is sitting by the window. She leafs through a magazine, looks at photographs of people and nature. My mother is a geography teacher. "Mom," I call her.

Mother - subject

Near the window - circumstance

Magazine- addition

Photo- addition

Of people- definition

nature- definition

Mother- subject

Teacher- predicate

Geography- definition

Mum- appeals, as well as introductory words, prepositions, conjunctions, particles are not members of the sentence.

test of strength

Check your understanding of the contents of this chapter.

Final test

  1. What nouns denote individual specific objects, and not groups of homogeneous objects?

    • proper names
    • Common nouns

  2. Which group of nouns has the most variety of meanings?

    • proper names
    • Common nouns

  3. Is animateness-inanimateness expressed grammatically: by a set of endings?

  4. How can you find out the gender of a noun?

    • By value
    • By compatibility with other words (adjectives, pronouns, past tense verbs) and by endings

  5. What are the names of nouns that have endings characteristic of different declensions?

    • Indeclinable
    • Differing

  6. What is the sign of the number of nouns good, evil, envy?

    • Permanent (immutable)
    • non-permanent (changing)

  7. Nouns are divided into proper and common nouns according to their meaning. The very definitions of this part of speech have Old Slavonic roots.

    The term "common" comes from "reprimand", "reproach", and is used for the general name of homogeneous, similar objects and phenomena, and "own" means "feature", an individual person or a single object. This naming distinguishes it from other objects of the same type.

    For example, the common word "river" defines all rivers, but the Dnieper, Yenisei are proper names. These are constant grammatical features of nouns.

    What are proper names in Russian

    A proper name is an exclusive name for an object, phenomenon, person, different from others, standing out from other multiple concepts.

    These are the names and nicknames of people, the names of countries, cities, rivers, seas, astronomical objects, historical events, holidays, books and magazines, animal names.

    Also, ships, enterprises, various institutions, product brands and much more that require a special name can have their own names. May consist of one or more words.

    Spelling is determined by the following rule: all proper names are capitalized. For example: Vanya, Morozko, Moscow, Volga, Kremlin, Russia, Russia, Christmas, Battle of Kulikovo.

    Names that have a conditional or symbolic meaning are enclosed in quotation marks. These are the names of books and various publications, organizations, firms, events, etc.

    Compare: Big theater, but the Sovremennik theater, the Don River and the Quiet Don novel, the play Thunderstorm, the Pravda newspaper, the Admiral Nakhimov motor ship, the Lokomotiv stadium, the Bolshevichka factory, the Mikhailovskoye Museum-Reserve.

    Note: the same words, depending on the context, are common or proper and are written according to the rules. Compare: bright sun and star Sun, native earth and planet Earth.

    Proper names, consisting of several words and denoting a single concept, are underlined as one member of the sentence.

    Let's look at an example: Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov wrote a poem that made him famous. So, in this sentence, the subject will be three words (first name, patronymic and last name).

    Types and examples of proper nouns

    Proper names are studied by the linguistic science of onomastics. This term is derived from the ancient Greek word and means "the art of giving names"

    This area of ​​linguistics deals with the study of information about the name of a specific, individual object and identifies several types of names.

    Anthroponyms are called proper names and surnames of historical figures, folklore or literary characters, famous and ordinary people, their nicknames or pseudonyms. For example: Abram Petrovich Hannibal, Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Lefty, Judas, Koschey the Immortal.

    Toponyms study the appearance of geographical names, names of cities, streets, which may reflect the specifics of the landscape, historical events, religious motifs, lexical features of the indigenous population, and economic signs. For example: Rostov-on-Don, Kulikovo field, Sergiev Posad, Magnitogorsk, Strait of Magellan, Yaroslavl, Black Sea, Volkhonka, Red Square, etc.

    Astronyms and cosmonyms analyze the appearance of the names of celestial bodies, constellations, galaxies. Examples: Earth, Mars, Venus, Halley's Comet, Stozhary, Ursa Major, Milky Way.

    There are other sections in onomastics that study the names of deities and mythological heroes, the names of nationalities, the names of animals, etc., helping to understand their origin.

    Common noun - what is it

    These nouns name any concept from a set of similar ones. They have a lexical meaning, that is, informativeness, in contrast to proper names, which do not have such a property and only name, but do not express the concept, do not reveal its properties.

    The name doesn't tell us anything Sasha, it only identifies a particular person. In the phrase girl Sasha, we learn the age and gender.

    Common noun examples

    Common names are all the realities of the world around us. These are words expressing specific concepts: people, animals, natural phenomena, objects, etc.

    Examples: doctor, student, dog, sparrow, thunderstorm, tree, bus, cactus.

    Can denote abstract entities, qualities, states or characteristics:courage, understanding, fear, danger, peace, power.

    How to define a proper or common noun

    A common noun can be distinguished by meaning, because it names an object or phenomenon related to homogeneous, and a grammatical feature, because it can change by numbers ( year - years, man - people, cat - cats).

    But many nouns (collective, abstract, real) do not have a plural form ( childhood, darkness, oil, inspiration) or the only one ( frosts, weekdays, darkness). Common nouns are written with a small letter.

    Proper nouns are the distinctive name of single objects. They can only be used in the singular or plural ( Moscow, Cheryomushki, Baikal, Catherine II).

    But if they call different persons or objects, they can be used in the plural ( Ivanov family, both Americas). Capitalized, enclosed in quotation marks if necessary.

    Its useful to note: between proper and common names there is a constant exchange, they tend to move into the opposite category. common words Faith Hope Love became proper names in Russian.

    Many borrowed names were also originally common nouns. For example, Peter - "stone" (Greek), Victor - "winner" (Lat.), Sophia - "wisdom" (Greek).

    Often in history, proper names become common nouns: bully (English Houlihan family with a bad reputation), volt (physicist Alessandro Volta), colt (inventor Samuel Colt). Literary characters can acquire a common noun: donquixote, Judas, plushkin.

    Toponyms have given names to many objects. For example: cashmere fabric (Kashmir Valley of Hindustan), cognac (province in France). At the same time, an animate proper name becomes an inanimate common noun.

    And vice versa, it happens that generic concepts become uncommon: Lefty, cat Fluff, signor Tomato.

    Quite often, students ask: "What is a common noun and a proper name?" Despite the simplicity of the question, not everyone knows the definition of these terms and the rules for writing such words. Let's figure it out. After all, in fact, everything is extremely simple and clear.

    Common noun

    The most significant layer of nouns are They denote the names of a class of objects or phenomena that have a number of features by which they can be attributed to the specified class. For example, common nouns are: cat, table, corner, river, girl. They do not name any particular object or person, animal, but designate a whole class. When we use these words, we mean any cat or dog, any table. Such nouns are written with a small letter.

    In linguistics, common nouns are also called appellatives.

    Proper name

    Unlike common nouns, they make up an insignificant layer of nouns. These words or phrases denote a specific and specific object that exists in a single copy. Proper names include names of people, names of animals, names of cities, rivers, streets, countries. For example: Volga, Olga, Russia, Danube. They are always capitalized and refer to a specific person or single object.

    The science of onomastics is engaged in the study of proper names.

    Onomastics

    So, what is a common noun and a proper name, we have sorted it out. Now let's talk about onomastics - a science that studies proper names. At the same time, not only names are considered, but also the history of their occurrence, how they have changed over time.

    Onomast scientists distinguish several directions in this science. So, the study of the names of people is engaged in anthroponymy, the name of peoples - ethnonymy. Cosmonymics and astronomy study the names of stars and planets. Animal nicknames are explored by zoonymy. Theonymy deals with the names of the gods.

    This is one of the most promising branches in linguistics. Until now, research on onomastics is being carried out, articles are being published, conferences are being held.

    Transition of common nouns to proper names, and vice versa

    A common noun and a proper name can move from one group to another. Quite often it happens that a common noun becomes a proper name.

    For example, if a person is called by a name that was previously included in the class of common nouns, it becomes its own. A vivid example of such a transformation is the names Vera, Love, Hope. Previously, they were common nouns.

    Surnames formed from common nouns also pass into the category of anthroponyms. So, you can highlight the names Kot, Cabbage and many others.

    As for proper names, they quite often pass into another category. Often this refers to the names of people. Many inventions bear the names of their authors, sometimes the names of scientists are assigned to quantities or phenomena discovered by them. So, we know the units of ampere and newton.

    The names of the heroes of the works can become common nouns. So, the names Don Quixote, Oblomov, Uncle Styopa became the designation of certain features of appearance or character characteristic of people. Names and surnames of historical figures and celebrities can also be used as common nouns, for example, Schumacher and Napoleon.

    In such cases, it is necessary to clarify what exactly the addresser has in mind in order to avoid mistakes when writing the word. But often you can from the context. We think you understand what a common noun and a proper name are. The examples we have given show this quite clearly.

    Rules for writing proper names

    As you know, all parts of speech obey the rules of spelling. Nouns - common noun and proper - are also no exception. Remember a few simple rules that will help you avoid annoying mistakes in the future.

    1. Proper names are always capitalized, for example: Ivan, Gogol, Catherine the Great.
    2. Nicknames of people are also capitalized, but without quotation marks.
    3. Proper names used in the meaning of common nouns are written with a small letter: donquixote, donjuan.
    4. If service words or generic names (cape, city) stand next to a proper name, then they are written with a small letter: the Volga River, Lake Baikal, Gorky Street.
    5. If a proper name is the name of a newspaper, cafe, book, then it is taken in quotation marks. In this case, the first word is written with a capital letter, the rest, if they do not belong to proper names, are written with a small letter: "Master and Margarita", "Russian Truth".
    6. Common nouns are written with a small letter.

    As you can see, the rules are pretty simple. Many of them are known to us since childhood.

    Summing up

    All nouns are divided into two large classes - proper nouns and common nouns. The first is much less than the second. Words can move from one class to another, while acquiring a new meaning. Proper names are always capitalized. Common nouns - with a small one.

    There is a huge variety of phenomena in the world. For each of them in the language there is a name. If it names a whole group of objects, then such a word is. When there is a need to name one object from a number of homogeneous ones, then the language has its own names for this.

    nouns

    Common nouns are such nouns that immediately designate a whole class of objects united by some common features. For example:

    • Each water stream can be called in one word - a river.
    • Any plant with a trunk and branches is a tree.
    • All animals of gray color, large size, with a trunk instead of a nose are called elephants.
    • Giraffe - any animal with a long neck, small horns and high growth.

    Proper names are nouns that distinguish one object from the entire class of similar phenomena. For example:

    • The dog's name is Buddy.
    • My cat's name is Murka.
    • This river is the Volga.
    • The deepest lake is Baikal.

    When we know what our own name is, we can perform the following task.

    Practice #1

    Which nouns are proper nouns?

    Moscow; city; Earth; planet; bug; dog; Vlad; boy; radio station; "Lighthouse".

    Capital letter in proper nouns

    As can be seen from the first task, proper names, unlike common nouns, are written with a capital letter. Sometimes it happens that the same word is written first with a small letter, then with a capital one:

    • bird eagle, the city of Oryol, the ship "Eagle";
    • strong love, girl Love;
    • early spring, lotion "Spring";
    • riverside willow, restaurant "Iva".

    If you know what your own name is, then it’s easy to understand the reason for this phenomenon: words denoting single objects are capitalized in order to separate them from others of the same kind.

    Quotation marks for own names

    In order to know how to correctly use quotation marks in your own names, you need to learn the following: proper names denoting phenomena in the world created by human hands are isolated. In this case, quotation marks act as isolation marks:

    • newspaper "New World";
    • do-it-yourself magazine;
    • factory "Amta";
    • hotel "Astoria";
    • ship "Swift".

    The transition of words from common nouns to proper ones and vice versa

    It cannot be said that the distinction between the categories of proper names and common nouns is unshakable. Sometimes common nouns become proper names. We talked about the rules for writing them above. What are your own names? Examples of transition from the category of common nouns:

    • cream "Spring";
    • perfume "Jasmine";
    • cinema "Zarya";
    • magazine "Worker".

    Proper names also easily become generalized names of homogeneous phenomena. Below are our own names, which can already be called common nouns:

    • These are my young don Juan!
    • We aim at Newtons, but we don’t know the formulas ourselves;
    • You are all Pushkins until you write the dictation.

    Practice #2

    Which sentences contain proper nouns?

    1. We decided to meet at the "Ocean".

    2. In the summer I swam in the real ocean.

    3. Anton decided to give his beloved the perfume "Rose".

    4. The rose was cut in the morning.

    5. We are all Socrates in our kitchen.

    6. This idea was first put forward by Socrates.

    Classification of proper names

    It would seem that it is easy to learn what a proper name is, but you still need to repeat the main thing - proper names are assigned to one object from a whole series. It is advisable to classify the following series of phenomena:

    A number of phenomena

    Own names, examples

    Names of people, surnames, patronymics

    Ivan, Vanya, Ilyushka, Tatyana, Tanechka, Tanyukha, Ivanov, Lysenko, Gennady Ivanovich Belykh, Alexander Nevsky.

    Animal names

    Bobik, Murka, Dawn, Ryaba, Karyukha, Gray neck.

    place names

    Lena, Sayans, Baikal, Azov, Black, Novosibirsk.

    Names of objects created by human hands

    "Red October", "Rot-front", "Aurora", "Health", "Kis-kiss", "Chanel No. 6", "Kalashnikov".

    The names of people, surnames, patronymics, nicknames of animals are animate nouns, and geographical names and designations of everything created by man are inanimate. This is how their own names are characterized from the point of view of the category of animation.

    Proper names in the plural

    It is necessary to dwell on one point, which is due to the semantics of the studied features of proper names in that they are rarely used in the plural. You can use them to refer to multiple items as long as they have the same proper name:

    The surname can be used in the plural. number in two cases. First, if it denotes a family, people who are related:

    • It was customary for the Ivanovs to gather for dinner with the whole family.
    • The Karenins lived in St. Petersburg.
    • The Zhurbin dynasty had at all a hundred years of experience at a metallurgical plant.

    Secondly, if namesakes are called:

    • Hundreds of Ivanovs can be found in the registry.
    • They are my full namesakes: Grigoriev Alexandra.

    - inconsistent definitions

    One of the tasks of the Unified State Examination in the Russian language requires knowledge of what your own name is. Graduates are required to establish correspondences between sentences and those allowed in them. One of these is a violation in the construction of a sentence with an inconsistent application. The fact is that the proper name, which is an inconsistent application, does not change in cases with the main word. Examples of such sentences with grammatical errors are given below:

    • Lermontov was not enthusiastic about his poem "The Demon" (the poem "The Demon").
    • Dostoevsky described the spiritual crisis of his time in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" (in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov").
    • A lot is said and written about the film "Taras Bulba" (About the film "Taras Bulba").

    If a proper name acts as an addition, that is, in the absence of a defined word, then it can change its form:

    • Lermontov was not enthusiastic about his "Demon".
    • Dostoevsky described the spiritual crisis of his time in The Brothers Karamazov.
    • A lot is said and written about Taras Bulba.

    Practice #3

    Which sentences have errors?

    1. We stood for a long time at the painting "Barge Haulers on the Volga".

    2. In The Hero of His Time, Lermontov sought to uncover the problems of his era.

    3. In the "Journal of Pechorin" the vices of a secular person are revealed.

    4). The story "Maxim Maksimych" reveals the image of a beautiful person.

    5. In his opera The Snow Maiden, Rimsky-Korsakov sang love as the highest ideal of mankind.