Common Nouns, Proper Nouns, & Collective Nouns

Common Nouns

Nouns can be:

1. common nouns
2. proper nouns

There are MILLIONS of websites, and the word "website" is a common noun.

There is only ONE Google, and the word "Google" is a proper noun.

A proper noun is the name of something unique, like me (Joe). You can learn about proper nouns here.

This page is about common nouns, which are all the "normal", general nouns. Simple examples of common nouns are:

• book, table, car
• water, milk, oil
• music, art, literature
• dog, woman, teacher

Common nouns are everywhere. Look around you now and you will see many common nouns:

• door, window, tree, sky, cat, truck, road, computer, phone, bottle, ball, luggage, people, hair

Common nouns can be countable (bottle, dollar) or uncountable (milk, money); singular (desk, pencil) or plural (desks, pencils); concrete (piano, bed) or abstract (music, happiness). And they follow all the usual rules of countable/uncountable, singular/plural, concrete/abstract nouns. But there is ONE rule that ALL common nouns need to follow: they don't start with a capital letter!

Common Nouns Don't Need Capitals!

A typical mistake that people make with common nouns is to capitalize them. But remember, only a proper noun (like your name or title) needs to start with a capital letter. A person's "job" (chairman, president, king/queen) may or may not need capitalisation. It depends whether it is the "position" or the "title". There have been many presidents of the USA. Those are positions. But there is only one President Trump. That is his title and name.

If a common noun comes at the beginning of a sentence, then it gets a capital letter—because all sentences start with a capital letter.
If a common noun occurs in a heading (for example above, Common Nouns Don't Need Capitals!), then it may get a capital letter (depending on editorial style).
If a common noun occurs in the title of a book, movie, song, album etc, then it usually gets a capital letter (War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings, Night of the Living Dead, The Host, The College Dropout).
Of course, if a common noun occurs in a heading that is all in capitals (eg newspaper headline), then it is capitalized (MAN BITES DOG, CONTINENT CUT OFF BY FOG).

Here are some example sentences showing right and wrong use of capitalization:

• Incorrect: In the 20th century, the UK had four Kings and one Queen.
  Correct: In the 20th century, the UK had four kings and one queen.
• Incorrect: Elizabeth II is Queen of the UK.
  Correct: Elizabeth II is queen of the UK.
• Incorrect: The reign of queen Elizabeth II began in 1952.
  Correct: The reign of Queen Elizabeth II began in 1952.

And this table of common and proper nouns should show you the difference. Note that the common nouns do not start with a capital, and the proper nouns do start with a capital:

common noun	proper noun
car	Mazda
writer	Shakespeare
country	Brazil
continent	Asia
restaurant	MacDonalds
city	London
jeans	Levis

Look at these examples of common nouns and some proper nouns in use. The common nouns are in bold:

• People should go to Mars this century.
• Have any people been to the Moon?
• The planet Jupiter has more than seventy-five moons.
• The car I'd like to buy is a Toyota.
• Water is essential for life.
• Without water, we would all die.
• How many presidents do you know?
• Have you met Prime Minister May?
• I need to wash my jeans the day before we leave.
• I need to wash my Levis on Monday.

Proper Nouns

Your name is a proper noun. A proper noun is the special word that we use for a person, place or organization, like John, Marie, London, France or Sony. A name is a noun, but a very special noun - a proper noun. English proper nouns have special rules.

common noun	proper noun
man, boy	John
woman, girl	Mary
country, town	England, London
company	Ford, Sony
shop, restaurant	Amazon, Subway
month, day of the week	January, Sunday
book, film	War and Peace, Titanic

Capital Letters with Proper Nouns

RULE: We always use a Capital Letter for the first letter of a name or proper noun. This includes names of people, places, companies, days of the week and months. For example:

• They like Anthony. (not They like anthony.)
• I live in England.
• She works for Sony.
• The last day in January is a Monday.
• We saw Titanic in the Odeon Cinema.

In normal grammatical writing, there are NO exceptions to this rule. Sometimes, however, for stylistic reasons, people may choose to ignore the rule to give their writing a unique or "modern" look. This is typically seen in advertisements or company logos. For correct writing, and especially in exams, we recommend that you observe the rule without fail.

Proper Nouns without THE

We do not use "the" with names of people. For example:

first names	Bill (not the Bill)
	Hilary
surnames	Clinton
	Gates
full names	Hilary Gates

We do not normally use "the" with names of companies. For example:

• Renault, Ford, Sony, EnglishClub (not the EnglishClub)
• General Motors, Air France, British Airways
• Warner Brothers, Brown & Son Ltd

If the full (registered) name of a company starts with "The", then we use "The" if we use the full name, for example:

• The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd

In this case, "The" is part of the company's name and must be capitalised, like all names.

We do not normally use "the" for shops, banks, hotels etc named after a founder or other person (with -'s or -s). For example:

shops	Harrods, Marks & Spencer, Macy's
banks	Barclays Bank
hotels, restaurants	Steve's Hotel, Joe's Cafe, McDonald's
churches, cathedrals	St John's Church, St Peter's Cathedral

We do not normally use "the" with names of places. For example:

towns	Washington (not The Washington), Paris, Tokyo
states, regions	Texas, Kent, Eastern Europe
countries	England, Italy, Brazil
continents	Asia, Europe, North America
islands	Corsica
mountains	Everest

Exception! If a country name includes "States","Kingdom", "Republic" etc, we use "the":

states	the United States, the US, the United States of America, the USA
kingdom	the United Kingdom, the UK
republic	the French Republic

We do not use "the" with "President/Doctor/Mr etc + Name":

the president, the king	President Bush (not the President Bush)
the captain, the detective	Captain Kirk, Detective Colombo
the doctor, the professor	Doctor Well, Dr Well, Professor Dolittle
my uncle, your aunt	Uncle Jack, Aunt Jill
	Mr Gates (not the Mr Gates), Mrs Clinton, Miss Black

Look at these example sentences:

• I wanted to speak to the doctor.
• I wanted to speak to Doctor Brown.
• Who was the president before President Kennedy?

We do not use "the" with "Lake/Mount + Name":

the lake	Lake Victoria
the mount	Mount Everest

Look at this example sentence:

• We live beside Lake Victoria. We have a fantastic view across the lake.

We do not normally use "the" for roads, streets, squares, parks etc:

streets etc	Oxford Street, Trenholme Road, Fifth Avenue
squares etc	Trafalgar Square, Oundle Place, Piccadilly Circus
parks etc	Central Park, Kew Gardens

Many big, important buildings have names made of two words (for example, Kennedy Airport). If the first word is the name of a person or place, we do not normally use "the":

people	Kennedy Airport, Alexander Palace, St Paul's Cathedral
places	Heathrow Airport, Waterloo Station, Edinburgh Castle

Proper Nouns with THE

We normally use "the" for country names that include "States","Kingdom", "Republic" etc:

States	the United States of America/the USA
Kingdom	the United Kingdom/the UK
Republic	the French Republic

We normally use "the" for names of canals, rivers, seas and oceans:

canals	the Suez Canal
rivers	the River Nile, the Nile
seas	the Mediterranean Sea, the Mediterranean
oceans	the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific

We normally use "the" for plural names of people and places:

people (families, for example)	the Clintons
countries	the Philippines, the United States
island groups	the Virgin Islands, the British Isles
mountain ranges	the Himalayas, the Alps

Look at these sentences:

• I saw the Clintons today. It was Bill's birthday.
• Trinidad is the largest island in the West Indies.
• Mount Everest is in the Himalayas.

We normally use "the" with the following sorts of names:

hotels, restaurants	the Ritz Hotel, the Peking Restaurant
banks	the National Westminster Bank
cinemas, theatres	the Royal Theatre, the ABC Cinema
museums	the British Museum, the National Gallery
buildings	the White House, the Crystal Palace
newspapers	the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Post
organisations	the United Nations, the BBC, the European Union

We normally use "the" for names made with "of":

• the Tower of London
• the Gulf of Siam
• the Tropic of Cancer
• the London School of Economics
• the Bank of France
• the Statue of Liberty

Collective Nouns

A collective noun is a noun that represents a collection of individuals, usually people, such as:

• a team (for example: eleven football players)
• a family (for example: mother, father and two children)
• a crew (for example: 100 sailors)

Here are some more collective noun examples. As you see, collective nouns can consist of a few people or tens, hundreds or thousands of people:

• committee, jury, senate, company, audience, police, army

Most collective nouns are groups of people, but some refer to animals or objects, for example:

• animals: a herd of cows, a flock of sheep
• objects: a fleet of ships, a convoy of trucks

Proper Nouns as Collective Nouns

Many collective nouns are common nouns, but they can also be proper nouns when they are the name of a company or other organisation with more than one person, for example Microsoft. Here are some more examples of collective nouns that are proper nouns:

• Sony, Apple, CNN, the BBC, the United Nations, WHO, Thai Air, Interpol, the FBI, Cambridge University, Manchester United

Is a Collective Noun Singular or Plural?

Each of the collective nouns above is a single "thing". But it consists of more than one individual. So the question arises: is a collective noun singular or plural?

To which the answer is: it depends. A collective noun can be singular OR plural, depending on how you see the individuals in the group.

If you see the individuals acting together, as a whole, then you probably treat the collective noun as singular (with singular verbs and singular pronouns), for example:

• The jury has delivered its conclusion to the judge.

If you see the individuals acting individually, then you probably treat the collective noun as plural (with plural verbs and plural pronouns), for example:

• The jury have not reached a conclusion because they are still arguing among themselves.

British and American Differences

Note that as a general rule:

• British English tends to treat collective nouns as plural
• American English tends to treat them as singular

So in the example above, American English speakers might use a singular verb with jury and rephrase the rest of the sentence to avoid a logical absurdity:

• The jury has not reached a conclusion because its members are still arguing among themselves.

However, even in American English, it is acceptable to use a plural verb if you really wish to emphasize the individuality of the collective noun members.

• The San Francisco crowd were their usual individualistic selves.

In American English it is also possible to use a plural pronoun with a singular verb, as in:

• The family next door is very quiet. We never hear them.

In all varieties of English, the collective noun police is always treated as plural:

• The police are coming.
• The police were the first on the scene.
• The police have issued their report.

A Collective Noun Can Itself Be Singular and Plural

In most cases a collective noun can itself be plural. In other words, you can have more than one collective noun. For example, in a game of football there are TWO teams. In a street there are many families. In such cases, a plural verb is automatically used, as in these examples:

• The many ships' crews in port at the time were constantly fighting.
• The two companies have been negotiating for over a week.

Finally, here are some more example sentences...

collective noun treated as singular	collective noun treated as plural
The club was founded in 2003.	The club are currently displaying their best photos.
Does Sony make mobile phones?	Do Sony plan to make cars?
The board of directors uses this room for its meetings.	The board of directors are eating sandwiches for their lunch.
The family next door is very quiet. We never hear them.*	My family are always arguing. The neighbours often hear us.
The school reopens in September.	The school are preparing for their winter marathon.
CNN does like to blow its own trumpet.	CNN do like to blow their own trumpet.

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-common.php

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-proper.htm

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-collective.php