proper name

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

proper name (plural proper names)

1. A word or phrase that has noun part of speech and names a specific object, usually capitalized, examples being Martin or New York.

   Synonyms: proper noun, name, selfname

   • 1950, Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics:

     A proper name, when it occurs in a proposition, is always, at least according to one of the possible ways of analysis (where there are several), the subject that the proposition or some subordinate constituent proposition is about, and not what is said about the subject.

   • 1970, John R. Searle, Speech acts‎^[1]:

     We might clarify some of the points made in this chapter by comparing paradigm proper names with degenerate proper names like "the Bank of England".

   • 1970, W. H. Auden, A Certain World, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, page 267:

     Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. Someone who is translating into English a German novel, the hero of which is named Heinrich, will leave the name as it is; he will not Anglicize it into Henry.

   • 2009, Sam Cumming, “Names”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy‎^[2]:

     For instance, the proper name ‘Jessica Alba’ consists of two proper nouns: ‘Jessica’ and ‘Alba’.

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:proper name.

Usage notes

• The term is synonymous with proper noun since dictionaries tend to define proper noun as including multi-word phrases. Some uses of proper noun are more restricted.

Further reading

• “proper name”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “proper noun”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “proper noun”, in Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
• “proper noun”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
• proper name in Britannica Dictionary
• Name in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Proper noun on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Proper name (philosophy) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• proper name, proper noun, proper names, proper nouns at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.