A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity, such

as London, Jupiter, Sarah, or Microsoft, as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun
that refers to a class of entities (city, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to
instances of a specific class (a city, another planet, these persons, our corporation).[1][2][3][4] Some
proper nouns occur in plural form (optionally or exclusively), and then they refer to groups of entities
considered as unique (the Hendersons, the Everglades, the Azores, the Pleiades). Proper nouns
can also occur in secondary applications, for example modifying nouns (the Mozart experience;
his Azores adventure), or in the role of common nouns (he's no Pavarotti; a few would-
be Napoleons). The detailed definition of the term is problematic and, to an extent, governed by
convention.[5][6]
A distinction is normally made in current linguistics between proper nouns and proper names. By this
strict distinction, because the term noun is used for a class of single words (tree, beauty), only
single-word proper names are proper nouns: Peter and Africa are both proper names and proper
nouns; but Peter the Great and South Africa, while they are proper names, are not proper nouns.
The term common name is not much used to contrast with proper name, but some linguists have
used the term for that purpose. Sometimes proper names are called simply names; but that term is
often used more broadly. Words derived from proper names are sometimes called proper
adjectives (or proper adverbs, and so on), but not in mainstream linguistic theory. Not every noun or
noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name. Blackness and chastity are common
nouns, even if blackness and chastity are considered unique abstract entities.
Few proper names have only one possible referent: there are many places named New
Haven; Jupiter may refer to a planet, a god, a ship, a city in Florida, or a symphony; at least one
person has been named Mata Hari, but so have a horse, a song, and three films; there are towns
and people named Toyota, as well as the company. In English, proper names in their primary
application cannot normally be modified by an article or other determiner (such as any or another),
although some may be taken to include the article the, as in the Netherlands, the Roaring Forties,
or the Rolling Stones. A proper name may appear to refer by having a descriptive meaning, even
though it does not (the Rolling Stones are not stones and do not roll; a woman named Rose is not a
flower). If it had once been, it may no longer be so, for example: a location previously referred to as
"the new town" may now have the proper name Newtown, though it is no longer new, and is now a
city rather than a town.
In English and many other languages, proper names and words derived from them are associated
with capitalization; but the details are complex, and vary from language to language
(French lundi, Canada, canadien; English Monday, Canada, Canadian). The study of proper names
is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology while a rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper
names is a matter for philosophy of language.[citation needed]