Talk:Proper noun

Arthrous proper nouns

A "weak proper noun" refers to what I've normally heard called an "arthrous proper noun". It seems that the former may be a jargon term, while the latter is merely descriptive - though very precisely so. Perhaps "arthrous" should be mentioned in the description. (Google Ngram reports zero publications using either term, so it's unreasonable to assert that _either_ is more widely understood. Perhaps {‌{citation-needed}} is needed? Maybe there are some publications behind paywalls?)

Separately I have a question: is an arthrous title or role used to refer to the holder of the position actually a proper noun, or merely a descriptive ordinary noun? I'm thinking of phrases such as "The Queen" or "The Speaker" or "The Chief Justice"? What about when it's a place, such as "The Oval Office"? Martin Kealey (talk) 03:31, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

It varies. As just a title/office, "chief justice" is a common-noun phrase. Even if the title is unique ("president of the United States"). A giveaway sign is that they can be pluralized to form a class (either of essentially-same offices in different countries or other organizations, e.g. "members of parliament from 14 countries", or different holders of the same or equivalent positions: "two former home secretaries and 14 members of parliament in the UK"). Similarly, lots of countries have (or have had) kings or queens, and most countries with them have had several. It's conventional to capitalize such a title (in full or abbreviated form) when directly attached to a name: "Queen Elizabeth II", "President Trump", "King Louis XIV", "King of France Louis XIV", but not when separated from the name ("the king of France, then Louis XIV", "Donald Trump, the American president"), even if just by punctuation that would normally not be there "(after he became king of France, Louis XIV was ..."), nor when modified into a description instead of just given as the title or a standardized short form ("French king Louis XIV", "controversial American president Donald Trump"). I.e., capitalize it only when it's being used as effectively fused with the name. Finally, something like "the Queen" or "the President" is capitalized when it is used, in a clear context, as a stand-in for the name of a specific person rather than as a reference to the office/position/role: "Elizabeth II and Barack Obama met in person in 2009. The President was invited by the Queen to ...". There are of course various style guides that will diverge from one point or another of this, because English has no "official" rules. But these are the majority practices in contemporary, formal English. The most common divergences are in journalism, with newswriters in the US often liking to capitalize every occurrence of US and state governmental job titles, and in the UK often liking to capitalize the British equivalents of those as well as peerage titles, even when not attached to names ("three Dukes and a Marquess"), but this practice is declining. A parallel trend is a reduction in capitalization of commercial job titles even when attached to names ("XYZCorp publicity director Xavier Youill Zounds"), and we can expect this trend to continue into governmental titles. The main reason for it is that some of these are quite long, as are some of the entities issuing them, so the result ends up being a morass of capitalization, which is a reading impediment. PS: It's never "The" with a capital T with any of these things, except at the beginning of a sentence (or equivalent, e.g. beginning of an image caption or title of a published work). I don't know of a style guide on the planet that would argue otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:52, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 1 January 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 09:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

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Proper noun and common noun → Proper and common nouns – Per WP:CONCISE. The current page title appears to be the result of an out-of-process move from Proper name. A previous RM concluded against Common and proper nouns, because the main subject was proper nouns. However, in the interim, the content has broadened to cover both noun types better, and the current name appears to have raised no objections (listing "proper" first, as that remains the main subject and the main thing readers are looking for here). It is simply deficient in being a redundantly worded title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support. In the unusually awkward title like this, “and” reads to me as either redundancy or technical ambiguity. I wonder every time, does it mean words that are nouns and are proper and common at the same time, or does it mean all nouns, except those that are neither proper nor common. The proposed reads naturally. When done, bring Noun#Proper nouns and common nouns into alignment. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:19, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, there are always potential ambiguities in cases like this, but we might as well go with the shorter version. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:27, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support - I get that the current title satisfies MOS:PLURAL, but the proposed one does not actually run afoul of it either, with the added benefit of not being light-speed awkward. Primergrey (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support because I hate the current title and because I read "proper and common nouns" as elliptical for "the distinction languages make between proper and common nouns", which is what the article is really about. Largoplazo (talk) 22:25, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Another Microsoft

The discussion on branding is poorly cited and strikes me as OR, so I applied OR section, additionally flagging one claim as dubious.

The claim is that "another Microsoft" is not allowed in English.

But what about this: "NeXT wasn't intended to become another Apple."

You might read this in any historical account of Steve Jobs anywhere, and take the phrasing as completely unexceptional, while mainly wondering if Steve was blowing smoke again when he said this. — MaxEnt 17:59, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 28 October 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. There is a consensus on the proposed move back to the previous long-term title of "proper noun", with one or two preferring the status quo. On the separate issue of proper name vs proper noun, there is no consensus that the former would be the title of choice. Some evidence was presented to that effect, but it was also suggested that "proper name" might be ambiguous, and there was no groundswell of support for "proper name", just two supporters. Either way, "noun" is the current nomenclature in effect so the move as proposed is effected. If someone wants to separately explore the "proper name" issue then a new RM is the place for that, since this one has kind of run its course.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Just to clarify the above close, as there has been a request on my talk page. I said "one or two preferred the status quo", meaning those who actively favoured the title "Proper and common nouns" over the title "Proper noun" with rationales related to that narrow question. In fact, I suspect there is only one such oppose, that of Red Slash. The other two opposes, from Tony and 114.72.76.18, were on the grounds that they preferred "proper name" over "proper noun", not because they opposed the principle of removing "common noun" from the title or to singularise the term, as suggested by the nom. I didn't count those as directly opposing the move originally proposed – even if those editors would have preferred no move to the proposed move – because those editors did not provide grounds to oppose the move on its own merits. See WP:NOGOODOPTIONS. I hope that makes some sense. In any case, it sounds like a future move request considering the "proper name" question in isolation may be required sooner rather than later, and it will be easier if there is only one naming issue under discussion rather than the unrelated singular/plural question.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

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Proper and common nouns → Proper noun – WP:SINGULAR, conformity with other language versions of Wikipedia, plus a somewhat more complicated rationale, in that "common noun" isn't really a separate concept from "proper noun" because as a term it only distinguishes proper nouns from other nouns. Dozens of other language versions of Wikipedia have articles on what is essentially this same topic, but their titles all seem to only use Proper noun, resulting in the odd scenario wherein our article doesn't have working interwiki links to any of the others except a stub on Chinese Wikipedia and a stub on Romanian Wikipedia (the latter being the only one that currently has separate articles on "proper noun" and "proper and common nouns", both of them stubs). Alternatively, I guess someone could try creating separate articles on common noun and Proper noun while maintaining this one to cover the "relationship" between the two, so as to solve the interwiki link problem, but this doesn't seem realistic. The article seems to have been moved away from the proposed title, without discussion, by Heegoop (talk · contribs) last year, with someone later following suit on ro.wiki[1] (by creating a content fork) and someone else later still following suit on zh.wiki[2] (again without discussion -- also worth noting that Chinese Wikipedia, for grammatical reasons, probably doesn't have a WP:SINGULAR). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe, Primergrey, Largoplazo, Buidhe, 2601:183:101:58D0:B9FF:B9A9:B798:4BA9, Johnbod, In ictu oculi, AjaxSmack, Artix Kreiger, and Dekimasu: Wait... on further examination, the current name has been discussed. A variation of it was unanimously rejected in 2018, before the move was made unilaterally, and a relatively minor grammatical fix was made as a result of an RM earlier this year. There has seemingly been little discussion of the prospect of completely undoing the undiscussed and careless 2020 move (which it turns out also ran against the 2018 consensus) based on the redundancy of a title that could be paraphrased as Proper nouns and nouns that are not proper nouns. I'd be interested to get the takes of those who participated in or closed the last two RMs. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:25, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Survey (28 October 2021)

• Support, as I did in "Requested move 21 March 2018" above - I missed the Jan 21 one. Good arguments in nom, & the other debates. Johnbod (talk) 04:33, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support, but it should have just been done via WP:RMTR as a revert of this undiscussed and obviously counter to consensus move. Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Would that it were that simple. The 2018 consensus was weak, though it would have been considered binding if I or another had thought to revert the unilateral move before it became the de facto status quo. The reason I opened this RM initially, before noticing either of the previous RMs, based on the assumption that any "substantial" RM to undo a situation that has remained in place for more than a year would not be considered uncontroversial. Add to that the fact that, after the undiscussed move, a second RM established a consensus for the current title that was about as weak as the 2018 consensus, but still would be more than enough to disqualify any "technical" request. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:39, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Good point. I think I meant it should have been reverted before it got so complicated. Thanks for bringing it to RM. Dicklyon (talk) 05:42, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, shit! I forgot that it might be good form to disclose that I technically brought this or something like it up on Wikidata yesterday (in the hopes of simply fixing the interwiki problem without an RM), and ArthurPSmith (talk · contribs) (who does seem to edit English Wikipedia occasionally) expressed the view that the two are not the same concept. This fact also may be why I thought this might be controversial. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:47, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support as per nom and last commentor. Fade258 (talk) 04:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Comment. This is the main article called from Noun#Proper and common nouns. That section title needs to match this article title. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: By That section title needs to..., do you mean I think that section title should...? Our Joe Biden article includes more than a dozen uses of the "main article" template, and most of the section titles in question bear either a loose resemblance or no resemblance at all to the titles of the articles in question. Personally, I think having a section in the Noun article with that title makes a lot more sense than it does here. For one thing, WP:SINGULAR doesn't apply to section titles. For another, of the foreign-languages I can read, ja.wiki is a little weird on this point, but fr.wiki currently has a section in their "noun" article entitled fr:Nom (grammaire)#Noms propres et noms communs, which links to an Article détaillé entitled fr:Nom propre. Thirdly, the section title there has been (largely) as it is now for at least a decade, with seemingly no problem being found by those who saw this article's title to be different. All that being said, I would not be strongly opposed to a proposal to change that section's title to "Proper nouns" (plural) if this RM passes. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:39, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

That section title needs to match this article title to ensure consistency and predictability of the presentation of the content, so that readers are not astounded.

Should I agitate for a rule for the use of the main article template? I suspect that I’ve been annoyed as a reader before, but in this case, where some really simple word quickly get very complicated, I find it more noticeable. I’ve read all of SMcCandlish’s words on proper nouns, and still it’s difficult. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:03, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, given that "common noun" just means "nouns other than proper nouns", and this relationship is explained in both this article and the other, I would frankly be surprised (though I wouldn't say "astounded") if the Noun article didn't do what it does now, whether or not this article has a title that is both compliant with our guidelines and prioritizes the main topic.

I am not sure what SMcCandlish's opinion on this matter is, and I doubt I have read even 1% of what he has written on this and related matters; I am assuming that the previous RM, even with its in the interim, the content has broadened to cover both noun types better, was based less on consideration of whether "common noun" is enough of a distinct concept from "proper noun" to merit inclusion in the title than on resolving the clumsy wording introduced by last year's move. I for one would not have supported an RM to the present title if the out-of-process move had never taken place, but if I had stumbled across this article a year ago I might have prioritized removing the "poetry" from the title without thinking about whether the substance of the move itself was good or bad.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:34, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I’m still digesting Wikipedia:Proper names and proper nouns.

I think the rename proposed is a good idea, and I think that the article noun needs work. SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:45, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support I feel no obligation to mirror titles on other languages' wikis—heaven knows their taxonomies are different enough from ours as it is, and I sometimes struggle to figure out whether I can create a proper interlanguage link connection between two of them—but it's certainly a useful guide as to whether a way of doing something makes sense. In addition to that, I thought to myself, well, does this article actually say anything about common nouns? In fact, the vast majority of occurrences in the article of the word "common" serve the purpose of (a) telling us that a common noun is any noun that is not a proper noun, (b) defining a proper noun, (c) describing the distinct features of proper nouns, or (d) describing the construction of a proper noun out of them. The only mentions of common nouns addressing them in their own right aren't even about common nouns in general: There's one about how some common nouns are capitalized in the US Bill of Rights as though they were proper nouns, and one about species names like Mountain Bluebird which, again isn't about common nouns, it's about a convention used in scientific literature for informal species names.

In the end, we have Noun, which covers everything that's true about nouns in general, whether proper or common; and then we have this article, which covers one class of nouns, proper nouns, that share features that distinguish them from the rest. This article is not really about common nouns at all, nor need it be.

Another way to look at it: We have Astronomical object; we have Star to cover a subset of them, not Stars and non-stars, and we don't have Non-star. I think that in the case of proper nouns, the existence of a term for nouns that aren't proper nouns misled someone into the idea that it should be included in the title. That's fallacious. All that would be needed is the observation in the lead that nouns not designated proper are called common nouns, with the boldfacing, and Common noun should, of course, continue to redirect here. Largoplazo (talk) 11:59, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support; however I would note the introductory paragraph does describe common nouns beyond them merely being nouns which are not proper, as "a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (city, planet, person, corporation) ...". The distinction between classes and individuals is a tricky one in itself though - is United States Congress an individual or a class, for example, given that we now have the 117th of them (not to mention the parts of which it is composed)? So probably some parts of this article should be rewritten a bit - there's quite a bit of duplication also that could be tidied up. Not volunteering to do this myself though! ArthurPSmith (talk) 12:35, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Why not Proper name? Tony (talk) 12:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

  WP:COMMONNAME? Johnbod (talk) 13:12, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

  Johnbod, "proper name" is more in use than "proper noun". See Google ngrams: [3]. The article is primarily about proper names, properly so-called (according to the best linguistically informed sources), despite some inadequacies in the lead that place talk of nouns first. "Proper name" is the more inclusive term, as the article makes clear. 114.72.76.18 (talk) 21:34, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

  Johnbod, here's even more compelling ngram evidence in support of "Proper name": [4] Tony (talk) 23:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

  As they aren't the same thing (though they're related and/or the respective sets they denote intersect), then how is it meaningful that one appears more often in Google's corpus? Looking at the article again, it seems it's about both. So I'm going to (hilariously) propose now that we rename it "Proper nouns and proper names". Largoplazo (talk) 23:55, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

  Not quite, Largoplazo. They do more than intersect. Considering just their canonic uses, the category proper names includes proper nouns. The broader and more inclusive concept is "proper name", and that is what the article is primarily concerned with. Common nouns (and ordinary "common" noun phrases) are what contrast most tellingly with proper names (and that is some justification for the article's present title). The Google ngram evidence quite convincingly shows that "proper name" is the very apt term in published sources, and in everyday usage. "Nouns" (mainly common nouns) are dealt with elsewhere in the WP article Noun. Proper nouns – typically or prototypically serving as "minimal" proper names – are well covered in their correct context in the present article, whose dominant concern is proper names.

  All that said, I don't object to your suggestion. I'd be happy with either "Proper name" or "Proper names and proper nouns" (reversing yours, to show the logical priority of proper names).

  114.72.76.18 (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

  Can you explain the difference? Your !vote implies you believe the count noun "Albanian" to be a "proper noun" but not a "proper name": can you cite a reliable source for this distinction? Webster says they're synonyms and prioritizes the former,[5] as does Nihon Kokugo Daijiten", which calls koyū-meishi "a translation from proper noun".[6] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:39, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

  Of course I can explain the difference. If you had read and understood the article, with its impeccable reliable sources that carry far more weight than a mid-size generalist dictionary, you might understand the difference also. As for "Albanian" and your flawed inference that if it's not a proper name it must be a proper noun, see my remark below (same timestamp as here). It is neither. Again, read the article. (Hint: look for "Londoner".)

  114.72.76.18 (talk) 22:25, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

  "Proper name" has more than one meaning. We'd end up having to move this to "proper name (linguistics)" to not conflict with "Proper name (philosophy)", and it's better per WP:NATURAL to avoid disambiguation when possible. Of course "proper name" shows up more in N grams; that's because it has more than one meaning, so it shows up (with different meaning) in more contexts than "proper noun" which has only one meaning in one context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:15, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

SMcC, on what evidence do you base your claim that the truly overwhelming dominance of proper name over proper noun is due to proper name having more than one meaning? (See hard evidence in published sources that Tony cites above). Nearly all occurrences are "Dictionary of Proper Names" (ignore capitalisation), not "Dictionary of Proper Nouns". Even if by some wild conjecture 90% of instances were concerned with proper names in what you claim is a distinct "philosophical sense" (yes, I've read your essay), those "linguistic sense" instances would still overwhelm instances of "Dictionary of Proper Nouns". The fact is that no one publishes a "Dictionary of Proper Names" that is concerned with any distinct philosophical understanding of the term. Why would they? All such dictionaries are to do with ordinary names in ordinary use, nearly all capitalised, some single-word and some more complex. 114.72.76.18 (talk) 04:40, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, because "Proper name" would be far better. We have an opportunity to maintain this article as the most informative, accurate, and accessible source concerning proper names and proper nouns currently online. The article is not perfect (and I no longer edit on Wikipedia; I leave the task of perfecting it to others). But nowhere will you find a more lucid and complete account of the difference between proper nouns, proper names, common nouns, capitalised common nouns derived from proper names that are not themselves proper names ("He's an Albanian" contains no proper name), and so on. Commenters here would do well to master all this elusive knowledge before expressing an opinion. We would all do well to distinguish between "being a proper name" (pretty well regardless of the language in use) and "being capitalised" (in English). These are quite different matters, and perennially confused. 114.72.76.18 (talk) 21:03, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? Who here is [failing] to distinguish between "being a proper name" (pretty well regardless of the language in use) and "being capitalised" (in English) and what does that even have to do with your !vote? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:39, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

"What on earth" do you mean, asking a question like that? I explicitly anticipated this sort of confusion (discernible in earlier material on this talkpage), and sure enough you have provided a perfect current example, with this remark (just a little above here):

"Your !vote implies you believe the count noun 'Albanian' to be a 'proper noun' but not a 'proper name': can you cite a reliable source for this distinction?"

Reliable sources are cited in the article (read it!). But that's irrelevant here. What I in fact wrote:

" 'He's an Albanian' contains no proper name."

It also contains no proper noun; "[an] Albanian" is no more a proper name or proper noun (see English Wiktionary [7], and the section that follows immediately after that section) than French "[un] albanien" is (see French Wiktionary [8]). It seems you have been seduced by the accident of English capitalisation, just like others in earlier talkpage material (unarchived, as I write). The kind of confusion I note as a concern in my vote is rife. Go and read the article. While you're there fix its degraded details, like this unmatched parenthesis "by articles or another determiner)" and this wrongly italicised one "the New Statesman)". And ask yourself how it came about that a note to the article could begin like this:

"b. ^ The author distinguishes the two terms (including in separate index entries), but elsewhere in the text he conflates them."

Bizarre. What author? No author or work is mentioned in the text where the note is tagged. Same fault in notes c, f, and g.

Editors would use their own and everyone else's time better if they used it to repair what was once a far better article, rather than coming here with RMs based on ignorance of the article's content and core topic.

114.72.76.18 (talk) 22:25, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support per WP:CONCISE. However, WP:SINGULAR doesn't apply, because "proper and common nouns" is a plural subject by its nature and "proper and common noun" would not be grammatical. PS: Just make sure that "common noun", "common nouns", "common noun phrase", "common-noun phrase", etc., redirect here and that common noun appears boldfaced in the lead (as the opposite of proper noun) so people know why they ended up here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:17, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

SMcC, are you sure you want to vote this way? Don't you agree that proper name is the superordinate concept, and that proper nouns are merely nouns specialised to head proper names (as Pullum and Huddleston have it)? Indeed, according to a much-cited view of the properhood theorist Richard Coates, "the category of proper nouns is epiphenomenal upon the basic category of proper name expressions." That is, proper names are basic and proper nouns are merely derivative (and explanatorily nugatory). So what is important here? A blinkered legalistic adherence to WP conventions and preferences, or naming this article clearly (and structuring and detailing this article clearly – obviously still a work in progress)? But in fact there is no dichotomy. A little more reflection and subtle deliberation would guide us to a solution. That solution is not, however, to spiral back through a series of haphazard and ill-informed RMs for this article, to a sorely inadequate title that it had in the past: "Proper noun". 114.72.76.18 (talk) 04:40, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is a perfectly fine title according to our policies. See Life and death, promotion and relegation, etc. It's also fine regarding WP:PLURAL, since we are talking about a set of two types of nouns and the entire set is described in the article. Red Slash 18:16, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that it took only 6 minutes to read my RM rationale (let alone the rest of this discussion) hunt down to comparable examples of this unusual title format, and write the above. Helpfully, we don't have to believe that, since it's quite apparent that no consideration was given to whether, in light of the rationale presented, the above examples are actually comparable to this case by any objective measure. You or I may hold the philosophical belief that life and death are actually the same concept because "death" is just a name given to everything that isn't "life", but this is not some kind of objective fact. I think it is, however, an objective fact that "relegation" is not just a word for "everything that isn't promotion": while I don't follow sports, isn't it possible to remain in place rather than being either promoted or relegated? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:36, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Hijiri, why not assume good faith for a change? You have no idea how much time the latest opposer spent thinking about this, preceding the sample of consecutive edits that you cite. Don't project: not everyone jumps to conclusions and shoots from the hip without reading and thinking, you know. 114.72.76.18 (talk) 04:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Please drop the stick already. If you were editing under a username, I'd warn you that off-topic personal remarks like the above can lead to blocks. Ironically, you don't seem to have read more than the first third of my response: meanwhile, almost nothing you have posted in this discussion has related even slightly to the actual substance of the proposal, but rather is just WP:POINTy opposition based on your having a bee in your bonnet about the (unrelated) distinction between "proper noun" and "proper name". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

(Pot, kettle, ... never mind. Just don't come here pouncing with ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares oppose your ill-informed RM.) Hijiri, I gave up responding to everything you write when it became clear that you don't even read detailed and well-crafted answers, backed by high-calibre published sources. Consider: you just might be out of your depth. 114.72.76.18 (talk) 05:36, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Just going to note here that the above is an off-topic personal attack that was unprovoked. The answers that I "don't even read" are not "detailed and well-crafted" ones but rather ones where, upon reading the first three paragraphs, I got the strong impression that they had nothing to do with the topic of discussion and were just posted to waste my time. Needless to say, I am not "out of my depth" here, but rather am only interested in fixing a problem with interwiki links and discussing what seems like the best way of doing that, which has nothing to do with (apparently English-only?) distinctions between "proper nouns" and "proper names". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:48, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

ROFLMAO! Dude you criticize me for apparently not spending enough time on your move request, and then you don't even follow the link at life and death to find out that the article is about a concept from a board game. Stop the personal attacks. If your proposal fails, let it fail on the merits, not because you are burying it yourself under such negativity. Red Slash 16:27, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Ah, okay: so you were trolling the Japanese-speaker by linking to an article whose English title is "life and death" but is a translation of what is clearly one indivisible word in the original? I don't know a lot about igo in the English-speaking world (or really anywhere outside the Genji...), but do people often talk about "life" and "death" separately? Would an alternative title be Life (Go)? Anyway, it's always been my understanding that we prefer natural disambiguation to parenthetical disambiguation, to in the case of igo there is a reason for the current title that doesn't apply to this article at all: hence, WP:OSE. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:18, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This article is the redirect target also of common noun, which has hundreds of incoming links. People clicking on "common noun" shouldn't be directed to an article whose title only mentions "proper noun", as it might lead to the misunderstanding both of these are synonyms. It's better for the title to immediate make it clear the article deals with an opposition between two things, of which "common noun" is one (even if it then goes on to treat "proper noun" as the more interesting concept and "common noun" merely as its negation). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:31, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: I can appreciate the concern that not having "common noun" in the title could lead to a misunderstanding among those who are linked here from a separate article, but "hundreds of incoming links" might be pushing it. I looked at the first twelve pages listed at Special:WhatLinksHere/Common noun, and nine were redirects that naturally included no prose that linked to this page through the "common noun" redirect; rather, they had transcluded Template:R from common noun (which almost no readers, as opposed to editors, are likely to see and be linked here from). This template is currently transcluded in 407 of the 484 article-space pages that link to "common noun".[9][10] As for the other 77, it seems likely that they would resemble the 3/12 of the first dozen pages that link to common noun without the template: of these three, two are pages on proper nouns (Fenrir and Ares) that mention how their names were used as common nouns (meaning "wolf" and "war" respectively) in certain epic poems, which would prevent any potential misunderstanding, and one (Esperanto) uses it in contradistinction with adjectives, "derived adverbs" and verbs; I imagine any reader who doesn't know what a "common noun" is also would not know, from reading the Esperanto passage, what a "proper noun" is, and would therefore have to read the opening sentence of the present article in order to potentially be confused in the way you describe (but reading this sentence would clarify that the two are not synonyms). If it still seems like a serious issue, we could retarget common noun to Noun#Proper and common nouns, which is how French, Japanese, and presumably most other versions of Wikipedia handle it, but that seems like a separate discussion from this RM. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:40, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Point taken about the exaggerated link count because of the redirect template; hadn't noticed that. For the remaining genuine links from "common noun", I guess I'd be ok with your suggestion of retargeting it. If we can do that, I have no further objection to the proposed move. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:03, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Some essential source material

For the benefit of editors considering the comments above, and deciding how to deal with this latest requested move, I cite two top-level sources for the widely attested distinction between proper names and proper nouns. Both are quoted in the present article, but let's see them more copiously quoted here:

• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (weighs in at 20 hard-copy volumes; universally accepted as the dictionary of our language, if any dictionary deserves that accolade).

[From the entry proper, adj., n., and adv.]

proper name n. [compare Old French propri nom (1155; Middle French, French nom propre)] a name, consisting of a proper noun or noun phrase including a proper noun, that designates an individual person, place, organization, tame animal, ship, etc., and is usually written with an initial capital letter.

[Examples, etc., omitted]

proper noun n. Grammar a noun that designates an individual person, place, organization, animal, ship, etc., and is usually written with an initial capital letter; cf. proper name n. and common noun n. at common adj. and adv. Compounds 2.

[Examples omitted]

• The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) (an 1800-page achievement acclaimed by linguists across the English-speaking world as the pre-eminent linguistically founded descriptive grammar of our language). Underlinings are in original text.

[From Chapter 5, Nouns and Noun Phrases, at pp. 515–516]

20 Proper names, proper nouns, and vocatives

20.1 The distinction between proper names and proper nouns

The central cases of proper names are expressions which have been conventionally adopted as the name of a particular entity – or, in the case of plurals like the Hebrides, a collection of entities. They include the names of particular persons or animals (Mary, Smith, Fido), places of many kinds (Melbourne, Lake Michigan, the United States of America), institutions (Harvard University, the Knesset), historical events (the Second World War, the Plague). The category also covers the names of days of the week, months of the year, and recurrent festivals, public holidays, etc. (Easter, Passover, Ramadan). In many cases there are different versions of a proper name, typically with one more formal than the other(s): the United States of America vs the United States, the US, the States, or Elizabeth vs Liz and Lizzie.

In their primary use proper names normally refer to the particular entities that they name: in this use they have the syntactic status of NPs. For the most part, however, they can also be nominals that are parts of larger NPs: such nominals may be attributive modifiers or heads that are accompanied by dependents that are not part of the proper name itself.

[Examples omitted]

Proper nouns, by contrast, are word-level units belonging to the category noun. Clinton and Zealand are proper nouns, but New Zealand is not. America is a proper noun, but The [sic] United States of America is not – and nor are The United States or United and States on their own. Proper nouns function as heads of proper names, but not all proper names have proper nouns as their head: the heads of such proper names as The United States of America, the Leeward Islands, the University of Manchester, for example, are common nouns. Proper names with common nouns as head often contain a smaller proper name as or within a dependent, but they do not need to: compare Madison Avenue and Central Avenue, or Harvard University and The Open University. We noted above that many proper names have alternant versions, and one type of alternation is between a formal name with a common noun as head and a less formal version with the common noun omitted: The Tate Gallery vs The Tate.

Proper nouns are nouns which are specialised to the function of heading proper names. There may be homonymy between a proper noun and a common noun, often resulting from historical reanalysis in one or other direction. For example, the underlined word in the Earl of Sandwich is a proper noun, while that in a ham sandwich is a common noun. Similarly proper Rosemary (a female name) is homonymous with common rosemary (denoting a type of shrub). As this formulation indicates, we take such cases to involve pairs of different words, so that we can still say that proper Sandwich and Rosemary are specialised to the proper name use. Note by contrast that we don’t have homonymy in pairs like the University of Manchester and I haven’t yet decided which university to apply to: there is a single word university, functioning as the head of a proper name NP in the first case and of an ordinary NP in the second. The difference, of course, is that while the University of Manchester is a university, Sandwich is not a sandwich, and so on.

114.72.76.18 (talk) 04:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm just going to note here (i) that I agree that the OED is the premier dictionary of the English language, (ii) that it is a bit unusual that an English grammar and English dictionary are being cited by the same person who was talking above about be[ing] seduced by the accident of English capitalisation as sources on a linguistic matter that appears to relate to other languages just as much, and (iii) that the quoted material from both sources seems to support the proposed title rather than the quoter's preferred title. I would also be very interested to see how other languages deal with this distinction, or if the distinction only exists, as the choice of these two particular sources implies, in English (or perhaps "European languages" or "languages written with a writing system that distinguishes between upper- and lower-case letters" -- I'm skeptical given that, even in French, the direct translations of "proper noun" and "proper name" would be identical): Encyclopedia Nipponica doesn't go into much detail on the matter, but says that taiyō (the Sun) is not a koyū-meishi and that certain common nouns can become koyū-meishis, as is the case with taikō and o-daishi-san. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:39, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

After this I'm not going to waste time and effort here, Hijiri. The RM is ridiculous, coming from an editor who doesn't even mention proper names in proposing it and shows no evidence of understanding their place in the picture. Indeed, showing positive evidence of not understanding the accepted difference, even when it is all laid out in excellent sources for your benefit. Many other sources could be adduced to support the article's claim that the terms are connected but mean something different. To your particular points here:

• "I agree that the OED is the premier dictionary of the English language"

Yes. Did you also see that even OED makes a basic error? A proper name is "a name, consisting of a proper noun or noun phrase including a proper noun". Not necessarily, as a moment's reflection on The Open University will show. Or consideration of the film title For Whom the Bell Tolls, given even on Japanese Wikipedia as a proper name: 誰が為に鐘は鳴る. (Hijiri, do you think "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a proper noun? Do you think it is any sort of a noun?) I will probably write to the OED people about their error; they accepted the last suggestion I offered them, so perhaps they'll heed this one also. But note: OED certainly distinguishes proper name and proper noun as having distinct meanings, and not too shabbily. You do not, however. Why not?

• "it is a bit unusual that an English grammar and English dictionary are being cited by the same person who was talking above about be[ing] seduced by the accident of English capitalisation as sources on a linguistic matter that appears to relate to other languages just as much"

Heh. What would you have me do? This is English Wikipedia, and CGEL is far and away the most respected grammar of English. It also a great work of grammatical analysis tout court, assembled from the work of some of the world's most esteemed linguists. Yes, the content of this article is relevant to other languages also. In fact this English Wikipedia article gives far more generalised cross-linguistic information on proper names than any other Wikipedia I have looked at (French, German, Italian, etc. O, and Japanese).

• "the quoted material from both sources seems to support the proposed title rather than the quoter's preferred title"

Patently absurd. CGEL is at pains to mention and distinguish both proper name and proper noun in the actual heading of its first subsection under "20 Proper names, proper nouns, and vocatives": "20.1 The distinction between proper names and proper nouns". But you know better, right? We don't even need to mention proper names when considering the title of this Wikipedia article, right? And OED ("the premier dictionary of the English language") clearly contrasts them also. It would explicitly equate them, rather than contrast them, if it held that there was no difference in meaning.

• "I would also be very interested to see how other languages deal with this distinction, or if the distinction only exists, as the choice of these two particular sources implies, in English"

Now you're doing better! Let's see more of that interest in knowing stuff, rather than coming in with an RM when you haven't even grasped the content of the article (and by the way, haven't lifted a finger to fix flaws in it even after they're pointed out to you).

As it happens, this English WP article concerned with proper names is superior to all others that I have surveyed. The French WP article [Nom propre] is manifestly substandard, wearing this badge of shame at its head since 2009: "Cet article ne cite pas suffisamment ses sources"; and, since 2016, "L'article doit être débarrassé d'une partie de son jargon."

• "I'm skeptical given that, even in French, the direct translations of 'proper noun' and 'proper name' would be identical"

The French WP article, alas, falls into the same confusion as the title of our own article encourages – and many editors commenting in talk fall into, and the proposed article title Proper noun would perpetuate even more surely.

English luckily does have more pre-established words for making the distinction, yes. No one here thinks that noun and name, as single terms, mean the same thing. It's true that French nom can mean either noun or name (its source in Latin, nomen, means first of all "name" and only derivatively "noun" once the grammarians got hold of it – and then not always). But French linguistics has other words for noun that are more accurate. The meaning of nom extended in the past even to adjectives (noms adjectifs; cf. the older English term adjective noun, meaning simply "adjective"); but there is another term that serves for noun, as a kind of word: substantif. The French WP article [Nom] makes very clear the primacy of the meaning "name" for nom (showing the links here, even though they will not work on English WP; my own underlining):

Le nom est un mot ou un groupe de mots servant à désigner des êtres, des choses et des concepts. Le nom peut ainsi désigner une catégorie de personnes, d'animaux ou de choses, mais aussi de notions, d'actions, ayant des caractéristiques communes, ou, au contraire, désigner un être ou un lieu, voire une chose particulière, auquel cas, il s’agit d’un nom propre. Le nom peut être synonyme d’appellation ou de dénomination, à distinguer du nom, au sens grammatical du terme, qui est synonyme de substantif.

My translation, keeping French words as needed in the present circumstances, and glossing as necessary:

" ' Le nom ' is a word or a group of words used to designate beings, things, and concepts. 'Le nom' can therefore designate a category of people, of animals, or of things, but also of concepts, of actions, having common characteristics, or, on the other hand, designate a being or a place, or indeed a particular thing, in which case it is a 'nom propre'. 'Le nom' can be a synonym of 'appellation' or 'denomination', to be distinguished from 'le nom' [linked at this point to 'Nom (grammaire)', which definitely = Englishnoun], in the grammatical sense of the term, which is a synonym of 'substantif' [= English substantive, or noun]."

In fact some older sources (19C especially, but some 20C) do speak of substantifs propres ("proper nouns"). But the WP article just quoted does not. What it does do is effectively assign nom propre to the category noun phrase, and explicitly not to the category noun.

We should note that some noun phrases have a single noun as their sole constituent; but in a strict sense no noun phrase is a noun, and no noun is a noun phrase. Given that almost universally accepted fact, in the very strictest sense no proper noun is a proper name, and no proper name is a proper noun. Compare the complete imperative sentence "Go!". The fact that this sentence has only one word in it (go) does not mean that the sentence is that verb, or vice versa. No sentence is a verb, and no verb is a sentence.

• "Encyclopedia Nipponica doesn't go into much detail on the matter"

Not at all surprising. The English-language academic literature on these matters is vastly more developed and sophisticated than most comparable literatures (including the non-academic literature in English on these matters, which is mostly confused). It is important to look at other languages too, but Japanese theoreticians (for example) are not necessarily the best authorities on Japanese proper names.

114.72.76.18 (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Does any of the above wall of text relate to the substance of this RM? I read down as far as Hijiri, do you think "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a proper noun? and couldn't see how it does. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:25, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Shame on you, Hijiri. That strategy is the last resort of the resolutely unenlightened. There are none so blind as those who will not see; and there are none so stonily fixed in their ideas as those who will not read. For your sake, don't do that. And don't (against Wikipedia standards) place aspersions against editors in your [edit summaries], like this one:

• "On second thought, I don't need this grief. I'm not a specialist in this topic but I highly doubt the IP is either, since a specialist could simply cite a reliable source rather than rely on snark and insults. We'll see if any future !votes find the IP's (WP:CIRCULAR) logic compelling."

You have no idea what I'm an expert in (though you ought to have some hints by now); and my reasoning is in no way circular – even if WP:CIRCULAR applied on a talkpage, which it obviously does not. You invited insult with your "What on earth are you talking about?", and then gave a perfect example of what I was talking about by showing your ignorance of something vitally important in the article itself.

Let's both go and do something useful, yes? I have no time for people who refuse evidence that their own comments cry out for, and turn away from rational responses because it takes some effort to read them. Did you think for a moment how long it took to write them for you?

Enough!

114.72.76.18 (talk) 00:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Future RMs are almost inevitable: but let's wait

I have thanked admin User:Amakuru for closing the latest RM, and we can all be glad it's over. I have also requested that Amakuru amend the closing summary to make it clear that there were three votes in favour of retaining the old title for the time being, not "one or two".

For the record, I favoured retaining the existing title because the new one was no better. It's not healthy to have this vital article churning between titles, especially with RMs in which the proposer is not even familiar with the basics of the article's content. We have gone back to Proper noun, which is likely to perpetuate all of the old dismal false understandings.

Surely someone will sooner or later propose Proper name, Proper names and proper nouns – or even Proper and common names and nouns! From my extensive research in this domain over the years, I would welcome either the first or second of these. But editors are simply not ready for such an RM, and I hope no one will propose one yet.

A more pressing priority (ignored by everyone when I pointed out issues that needed fixing, in the discussion above) is to improve details in the article. There are four notes that make no sense at all, referring to "the authors" when no authors have been mentioned. There is a stray unmatched parenthesis, and one that is improperly italicised. That's just some of it.

After such a clean-up, it would be important to make the accepted relation between proper nouns and proper names even clearer in the lead. Obviously, few editors here have grasped the importance of that: so how can we expect uninvolved readers to get it? That said, I challenge anyone to find a better online treatment of the difference. Most discussions of proper nouns and names are profoundly confused, and I will even be suggesting to the OED that they amend their definition of "proper name" (see it quoted in full, above).

Having spent a good deal of time and effort in the RM discussion, I will not do such tidying up myself. I no longer edit on Wikipedia, except in the most minor and occasional way.

114.72.76.18 (talk) 22:58, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Amakuru: did a great job with a WP:NOGOODOPTIONS close. Red Slash 18:54, 16 November 2021 (UTC)