Why are proper nouns capitalized? I General rules. Noun: proper or common noun

Define a common generic concept for the listed nouns.

Sample: Baba Yaga, Vasilisa the Wise, Kashchei the Immortal, Sivka-Burka - ... fairy tale characters

• V.G. Perov, I.N. Kramskoy, A.K. Savrasov, V.M. Vasnetsov, I.E. Repin, I.I. Levitan - ...
• St. Petersburg, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tyumen, Moscow - ...
• I.A. Bunin, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, F.M. Dostoevsky, K.G. Paustovsky - ...
• Neva, Moscow, Volga, Don, Dnieper - ...
• P.I. Tchaikovsky, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, M.I. Glinka, D.D. Shostakovich - ...
• "Volga", "Niva", "Zhiguli", "Lada", "KAMAZ" - ...
• A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, M.I. Tsvetaeva, A.A. Akhmatova, B.L. Pasternak - ...

Proper nouns

Proper nouns are written with capital letter. These include:

• names, surnames, patronymics and nicknames of people (Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov);
• nicknames of animals (Sharik, Tuzik, Muska);
• heroes names literary works(Ilya Ilyich Oblomov);
• geographical names (Moscow, Frankfurt, Caucasus, Neva);
• astronomical and astrological designations (Moon, the constellation of the Hounds of the Dogs);
• titles of magazines, newspapers, literary works, etc. (newspaper " Is it true " , magazine " Our garden " );
• brand names of cars, cigarettes, etc. (automobile " Moskvich " , cigarettes " buddy " ).

Note: titles written not only capitalized, but also in quotation marks!

common noun >>> proper name

By the way, a scattered Is it a proper name or a common noun? Recall the beginning of S. Marshak's poem:

There lived a scattered man
On Basseinaya Street.
He sat down on the bed in the morning
Started putting on a shirt
Put his hands in the sleeves -
It turned out they were pants.
Here's how scattered
From Basseinaya Street!

Remember: Common nouns can become proper nouns and vice versa. In this case, the common noun (scattered person) became a proper name ( R scattered from Basseinaya Street).

This is how common nouns turned into Faith Hope Love into proper names Faith Hope Love. Another example of a dog name Ball.

Proper name >>> common noun

History knows many examples when proper names became common nouns. Here are some of them:

• So, the big perfected harmonica accordion received the name from the name of its own Bayan (Boyan).
• Cupcake and cake Napoleon, according to legend, owe the name to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who loved this type of confectionery.
• Colt, Maxim, Mauser, Nagant - famous inventors of weapons.
• The Belgian master Sachs gave the name to the popular wind instrument - saxophone y.
• One of the ancient legends tells about a handsome young man Narcissa, who was in love with himself so that he did not notice anyone and nothing around, but all the time looked at his reflection in the water. The gods, angry, turned him into a plant. The white narcissus flower leans to one side and seems to be looking down at its reflection with a yellow eye. ...
• 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 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.

About patronymics

Before patronymics were worn only by noble people, representatives of the merchant class, nobility and church authorities (Alyosha Popov-son = Alyosha Popovich), and a simple person, a peasant, was named according to his master or place of origin: Ilya from Murom = Ilya Muromets. If you want to learn more about names, check out the electronic or paper dictionary of names (http://lib.deport.ru/slovar/nam.html or use the section on names on our website.

Tasks and conclusions:

Which of these words are proper names, and which are common nouns (not proper names):

Explain the underlined words: what do you know about the concepts they denote? Which nouns can be pluralized and which ones cannot?

Conclusion: Proper names do not have a plural form (with the exception of the surnames of persons belonging to the same family - the Ivanov family, gentlemen Petrov).

Translate the nouns from the previous exercise into another language you know. What nouns and why cannot be translated?

Conclusion: Proper names are never translated, but only transliterated (written in letters of another language), for example: Irina = Irina

Proper names and quotation marks:
So, which proper names should be written in quotation marks, and which should not? Help Scattered to put quotes:

Rest house Tourist, dog Sharik, Newspaper, Mr. Ivanov, Roman Oblomov, mathematician Ilyin, Virgo constellation, spirits Moscow, Moscow city, Niva car, Mount Alatau, Rybolov magazine.

Conclusion: Makes of cars are written in quotation marks; brands and names of perfumes, cigarettes; the names of newspapers, magazines and literary works. Without quotation marks are written: proper names of people and literary characters, geographical and astronomical names.

Correct the mistakes in the work of your German friend. Why do you think he made these mistakes?

Behind my window is Golden autumn. I love this season very much. There is always the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. Last Year I bought a Book of a Fairy Tale in Russian here.




In German, all nouns are capitalized. English titles days of the week and months. There are no such rules in Russian. However, in these cases, "October" and "seasons" are capitalized? Why?

factory "Red October", P.I. Tchaikovsky or Antonio Vivaldi "The Seasons".

Do not forget: Names are capitalized and in quotation marks!

Guess the riddles

• City that "flies" - _________________________
• The longest river in the world is _________
• The river that bears the name of the girl is _______________________
• The deepest lake in the world is _____________________
• A sea without water
• Seas bearing "colored" names - ___________________
• The largest ocean is _________________________
• The ocean that bears the name of the country is _________________

The noun is one of the most important parts of speech both in Russian and in many others. indo European languages. In most languages, nouns are divided into proper and common nouns. This division is very important because these categories have different rules spelling.

Learning nouns in Russian schools starts in second grade. Already at this age, children are able to understand how proper names differ from common nouns.

In contact with

Usually, students easily learn this material. The main thing is to choose interesting exercises, under which the rules are well remembered. In order to correctly distinguish between nouns, the child must be able to generalize and attribute familiar objects to a specific group (for example: “dishes”, “animals”, “toys”).

Own

To proper names in modern Russian Traditionally, it is customary to refer names and nicknames of people, nicknames of animals and geographical names.

Here are typical examples:

A proper name can answer the question "who?" when it comes to people and animals, as well as the question "what?" when it comes to geographical names.

common nouns

Unlike proper names, common nouns do not denote the name of a specific person or the name of a specific locality, but the generalized name of a large group of objects. Here are the classic examples:

• Boy, girl, man, woman;
• River, village, village, settlement, aul, kishlak, city, capital, country;
• Animal, insect, bird;
• Writer, poet, doctor, teacher.

Common nouns can answer both the question "who?" and the question "what?". Usually, in discrimination exercises, younger students are asked to choose suitable common noun to a group of proper names, For example:

You can build a task and vice versa: match proper nouns to common nouns.

1. What dog names do you know?
2. What are your favorite girls names?
3. What is the name of a cow?
4. What are the names of the villages you visited?

Such exercises help children quickly learn the difference. When students have learned to distinguish one noun from another quickly and correctly, you can proceed to the study of spelling rules. These rules are simple, and students elementary school absorb them well. For example, a simple and memorable rhyme can help the guys with this: “Names, surnames, nicknames, cities - all with capital letter are always written!

Spelling rules

In accordance with the rules of the modern Russian language, all proper names are written only with capital letter. This rule is typical not only for Russian, but also for most other languages ​​of Eastern and Western Europe. Capital letter at the beginning names, surnames, nicknames and geographical names used to emphasize respect for every person, animal, locality.

Common nouns, on the other hand, are written with a lowercase letter. However, there may be exceptions to this rule. This usually happens in fiction. For example, when Boris Zakhoder translated Alan Milne's book "Winnie the Pooh and All, All, All", the Russian writer intentionally used capital letters in writing some common nouns, for example: " Big Forest”,“ The Great Expedition ”,“ Farewell Evening ”. Zakhoder did this in order to emphasize the importance of certain phenomena and events for fairy tale characters.

This is often found both in Russian and in translated literature. Especially often such a phenomenon can be seen in adapted folklore - legends, fairy tales, epics. For example: "Magic Bird", "Rejuvenating Apple", "Dense Forest", "Grey Wolf".

In some languages, capitalization is capitalization- in spelling names can be used in different cases. For example, in Russian and some European languages ​​(French, Spanish) it is traditional to write the names of months and days of the week with a small letter. However, in English language these common nouns are always written in capital letters only. Also, the spelling of common nouns with a capital letter is found in German.

When proper names become common nouns

In modern Russian, there are situations when proper names can become a household name. This happens quite often. Here is a classic example. Zoilus is the name of an ancient Greek critic who was very skeptical of many works of contemporary art and frightened the authors with his caustic negative reviews. When antiquity faded into the past, his name was forgotten.

Once Pushkin noticed that one of his works literary critics received very ambiguously. And in one of his poems, he ironically called these critics "my zoiles", implying that they are bilious and caustic. Since then, the proper name "Zoil" has become a household name and is used when it comes to a person who unfairly criticizes, scolds something.

Many proper names from the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol have become common nouns. For example, stingy people are often called "buns", and elderly women of a close mind are often called "boxes". And those who like to soar in the clouds and are not at all interested in reality are often called "manila". All these names came into Russian from famous work « Dead Souls”, where the writer brilliantly showed a whole gallery of landlord characters.

Proper names become common nouns quite often. However, the opposite also happens. A common noun can become a proper name if it turns into the nickname of an animal or a nickname of a person. For example, a black cat might be called "Gypsy", while a loyal dog might be called "Friend".

Naturally, these words will be written with a capital letter, according to the rules for writing proper names. This usually happens if a nickname or nickname is given due to the fact that a person (animal) has some pronounced qualities. For example, Donut was nicknamed so because he was overweight and looked like a donut, and Syrup was nicknamed because he was very fond of drinking sweet water with syrup.

Distinguishing proper names from common nouns is very important. If junior schoolchildren they will not learn this, they will not be able to correctly apply capitalization when writing proper names. In this regard, the study of common nouns and proper nouns should occupy an important place in school curriculum Russian as a native language and as a foreign language.

Ever since school, everyone has learned a simple rule that the word that begins a sentence is always written with a capital letter. But not only in this case, the use of capital letters becomes appropriate.

There are other cases in which it is necessary to capitalize a word.

1. Of course, each new sentence should begin with a capital (capital) letter, but there are some exceptions.

Note 1. In poetry, each verse begins with a capital letter, regardless of the punctuation mark that ended the previous line:

The unfortunate cat cut its paw -
He sits and cannot take a step.
Hurry to heal the cat's paw
Buy balloons!

And immediately people crowded on the road -
Noises, and screams, and looks at the cat.
And the cat partly walks along the road,
Partly through the air smoothly flies! (D. Harms, "Amazing Cat")

Note 2. If an ellipsis is used in a sentence, indicating discontinuity in speech, then words should be written after it with a small letter:

• And this week I have ... that .... son died. (A. Chekhov)

Note 3. The capital letter is not used even if after a direct speech ending with any punctuation mark, except for a period, the words of the author follow:

• - Quiet! Do not scream! he told me.
• “Maester Cressen, they came to us,” Pylos said softly, as if not wanting to intrude into the old man’s gloomy thoughts. (George Martin, "A Clash of Kings")

2. If at the beginning of a sentence there is an exclamation or an interjection with an exclamation mark, then after them the sentence is written with a capital letter.

However, if an interjection with an exclamation mark is used in the middle of a sentence, then the word following it is capitalized. For example:

• Oh! What glorious weather today!
• I wanted to move the vase, but she ah! and fell!

3. A colon is followed by a capital letter only if:

Thinking for a moment, the brother replied, “No”;

Note. However, if a quotation is entered as a continuation of a sentence, then it begins with a lowercase letter.

4. All proper names are always capitalized, including nicknames, names of geographical objects, cities, countries, rivers, villages, republics, states, etc. also, absolutely all the names of works, periodicals, programs, enterprises, shops, clubs, institutions of various kinds, etc. are written with a capital letter. However, unlike the first group of proper names, the second names are always enclosed in quotation marks. For example:

• Leonid Petrovich, Nikitina, Novosibirsk, Ob, Planovy settlement, Sharik (dog's nickname), Plaksa (person's nickname), Murka, Russian Federation, Baikal, Lake Teletskoye, Altai Republic, Alps, America, etc.;
• the Trud newspaper, the Otdykh club, the program “So far, everyone is at home”, the film “The Beginning”, the painting “The Girl with Peaches”, the Pyaterochka store, the Garden of Eden cafe, etc.

Note 1. The names of people who were previously individual, but in this context are used with a touch of contempt as a generic concept, are written with a small letter, for example: Judas of the modern world.

Note 2. The names of objects or phenomena that originated from proper names are written with a lowercase letter.

Note 3. Titles, ranks, positions - all this is written with a small letter: Academician Korolev, General Ivanov, Count Nulin.

Note 4. However, the names of the highest honorary positions are written in capital letters: Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, Hero Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union.

5. The following groups of adjectives are capitalized:

a) Being possessive names and denoting the belonging of a particular thing to a particular person:

• Vanya bag, Dalev dictionary.

b) Equal in meaning to the expression “in memory of such and such”, “in honor of such and such”, “name of such and such”:

• Pushkin readings.

Note 1. It is written in lower case:

a) possessive adjectives that do not have a full value of ownership:

• Lermontov style, Suvorov tactics, X-ray room, etc.

b) possessive adjectives denoting full ownership. But having in its composition the suffixes "-ovsk-", "-evsk-", "-insk-":

• Tolstoy's estate, Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons", etc.

Note 2. Adverbs formed from the names of proper people are always capitalized.

6. Adjectives that are part of the individual names of geographical objects are capitalized in the following cases:

a) If they are part of complex geographical names: Novosibirsk region;

b) If they are attached to a person's name as a nickname: Dmitry Donskoy, Alexander Nevsky.

7. The names of historical eras and periods, events and phenomena, documents and papers, works of art and other material cultural monuments are written with a capital letter.

This includes the following groups:

a) Nouns that have become proper names: October, Renaissance, Renaissance, Depression,

b) Combinations of an adjective with a noun: Peter's reform, Nikolaev's decree, the Treaty of Versailles, the Laurentian Chronicle.

c) Any other combinations of nouns and adjectives.

8. The names of public holidays and significant dates are written with a capital letter. However, the names of religious holidays and fasts of all religions are written with a lowercase letter.

9. All words in the names of the supreme organizations and institutions of the USSR are capitalized, except for official words and the word "party". For example:

• Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
• All-Union Leninist Communist Youth Union.
• Supreme Soviet of the USSR (RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and other republics).
• Union Council.
• Council of Nationalities.
• Council of Ministers of the USSR (RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and other republics).
• Supreme Court of the USSR.
• All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

Note. All words in the names of international organizations are also capitalized: the World Peace Council, the United Nations, etc.

10. In the names of ministries and main state administrations only the first word and the proper names included in them are capitalized. The same rule applies to large-scale cultural organizations:

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for new technology.
• USSR Academy of Sciences.
• Main Publishing Department of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR. In the full official names of Soviet institutions of local importance, higher educational institutions, entertainment enterprises, industrial and trade organizations, etc., the first word and the proper names included in the name are capitalized, for example:
• Council of Working People's Deputies.
• Yaroslavl Regional Executive Committee of the Soviets of Working People's Deputies.
• Moscow State pedagogical institute named after V. I. Lenin.
• Kuibyshev State Opera and Ballet Theatre.
• Russian folk choir named after Pyatnitsky.

The same rules apply to the names of foreign organizations and associations of similar significance and scale.

11. Official names parties are capitalized in the event that they do not begin with the word "party":

• Earth Party, Communist Party Russian Federation, Unity party.

12. In a special stylistic context, in campaign appeals and texts, in texts with patriotic content such words as "motherland", "man", "freedom", "conscience", "equality", "brotherhood", etc. may be capitalized.

Hello, please explain why the adjectives "Jules Verne" are written with a hyphen, and "Don Juan" - together. Thank you.

The point is that there is a noun Don Juan, which is spelled contiguous.

orthographic dictionary

Don Juan, -A ( litas. character) And Don Juan, -A ( seeker loveadventure)

don joie no zm, -A

Don Juan

Don Juan, -A

don joie, -your, -your

How is it correct - with a capital letter or with a lowercase letter - to write surnames if they are used not as an indication of a specific person, but as an indication of some characteristic set of qualities? For example, there is a Russian footballer named Putsko. He became a model of a young, inexperienced defender, not confident in his actions. And in this sense, we use his image in the sentence: “Having made a mistake, the Uruguayan defender must have been upset – in such cases, it is common for Putsko from different countries, and not only Russian, to worry.” Uppercase or lowercase?

The answer of the reference service of the Russian language

Proper names can be used generically (figuratively) as the names of people with certain traits of character and behavior, with certain qualities. But in order for them to begin to be written in lowercase, a long-term (and even centuries-old) tradition of such use must develop. Wed: Robinson, Don Juan, philanthropist, Judas, Lovelace. In the example you gave, of course, you need to keep the capital letter in your proper name.

Hello! In printed publications, there is the use of proper names in the meaning of common nouns, for example, "Belgorod Breivik", "Tambov Mavrodi". How, then, should such a spelling be formatted correctly? Do you need quotation marks and what to capitalize. Thank you in advance!

The answer of the reference service of the Russian language

There is no doubt that proper names Breivik, Mavrodi, used in a figurative sense, retain the capital letter (they still differ from those that have become common nouns Don Juan, Robinson, philanthropist and etc.). There is no reason to capitalize adjectives. But the quotation marks are in place: they indicate both the convention and the integrity of the naming. Therefore it is correct: "Moscow Breivik", "Belgorod Breivik", "Tambov Mavrodi".

"There were some little shalyapins on the stage." Is it correct that in this sentence the proper name has become a common noun and is written with a small letter?

The answer of the reference service of the Russian language

Correct with capitalization: little Chaliapins. Only some proper names of persons, literary or mythological characters, when used in a generalized (figurative) way, are written with a lowercase letter; the spelling of such words is determined in dictionary order: Judas, Robinson, philanthropist, Don Juan etc. In most cases, the use of proper names in a common sense does not require the replacement of an uppercase letter with a lowercase one, cf .: we all look at Napoleons(Pushkin).

Please! This is urgent (today we rent a room). Capital or lowercase letters are used to write proper names used in plural? Specifically, this case is of interest: "I remember that in the early 90s the whole country, with bated breath, followed the love repetitive events that took place with all sorts of Marias, Juanites and Louis Alberts." "...Lucy and Diego replaced Masha and Petit." it seems to me that it is written correctly with a capital letter, tk. the following rule pops up in my head: if a proper name has become a common noun (don joie n (s), patron (s), paparazzi), then it is written with a lowercase letter, but if it is only used with a common noun, then with capital. Here's what I can't figure out: this case Are proper names used as common nouns or do they refer to several persons with the same name? Or have they already become common nouns? In general - with what letter do you write? Thank you! Really looking forward to the answer!

The answer of the reference service of the Russian language

We recommend capitalizing all names in this example.

Common nouns

In Russian, by meaning, nouns are divided into own And common nouns .

Word " common noun "was formed from the Old Slavonic word and means" speak ».

Common nouns- this is a common name for all homogeneous objects and phenomena.

proper names

Word " own " was also formed from the Old Slavonic word and means " personal, self-owned ».

Proper name is the name by which an object is called to distinguish it from another homogeneous object.

Proper nouns- These are the names of individuals, single objects.

A distinctive feature of common nouns is that they carry lexical meaning words.

For example, we say “student” and understand what is being said.

Proper names do not have this property.

Proper names include:

Surnames, names, patronymics of people, as well as nicknames of animals.

place names

Names of newspapers, magazines.

To highlight proper names in writing, it is customary to write them with a capital letter.

Tasks for fixing

Now let's practice identifying common nouns and proper nouns.

Let's look at the pictures. Let's name the items. Let's define a proper or common noun.

Let's check what happened.

Moscow - own - the name of the city.

Grass is a common noun.

Aibolit - own - the name of a fairy-tale character.

House is a common noun.

Don - own - the name of the river.

Pushkin - own - the name of the poet.

Let's read the words. How do they differ?

Starlings, starlings.

Fishermen, fishermen.

Watermelons, watermelons.

Insert appropriate words into each sentence.

Lyova ...... made a house for ......

Andryusha ...... loved to listen to stories ......

Tolya ...... brought a lot ......

Let's check.

The first words are proper names - surnames - are capitalized - Skvortsov, Rybakov, Arbuzov.

The second words are common nouns.

Lyova Skvortsov made a house for starlings.

Andryusha Rybakov liked to listen to the stories of the fishermen.

Tolya Arbuzov brought a lot of watermelons.

This task helped us to understand that the same word can be both proper and common noun. It must be remembered that proper names are written with a capital letter.

Choose the correct letter in brackets and explain your choice.

Our cat's name is (P, p) fawn.

Dad brought fragrant (P, p) fawns from the forest.

A river (B, b) elaya flows near our village.

The student is wearing a (B, b) white blouse.

In the summer we will go to the (H, h) Black Sea.

Mom bought a (H, H) black dress.

Let's check the correctness of the task.

Our cat's name is Ryzhik.

Let's write the ginger with a capital letter - this is the nickname of the animal - its own noun.

Dad brought fragrant mushrooms from the forest.

Ryzhiki - we will write with a lowercase letter - the name of the mushrooms is a common noun.

The Belaya River flows near our village.

White - we will write with a capital letter - the name of the river is a proper noun.

The student is wearing a white blouse.

White - we will write with a lowercase letter - the name of the color is a common noun.

In the summer we will go to the Black Sea.

Black - capitalize - the name of the sea - a proper noun.

Mom bought a black dress.

Black - we will write with a lowercase letter - the name of the color is a common noun.

History knows many examples when proper names became common nouns. Here are some of them:

Napoleon cake and cake, according to legend, owe their name to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who loved this type of confectionery.

One of ancient myths tells about the handsome young man Narcissus, who was so in love with himself that he did not notice anyone and nothing around, but all the time looked at his reflection in the water. The gods, angry, turned him into a plant. The white narcissus flower leans to one side and seems to be looking down at its reflection with a yellow eye.

In this lesson, we learned that nouns can be proper and common nouns. Proper names are capitalized.

1. Klimanova L.F., Babushkina T.V. Russian language. 2. - M.: Enlightenment, 2012 (http://www.twirpx.com/file/1153023/)
2. Buneev R.N., Buneeva E.V., Pronina O.V. Russian language. 2. - M.: Balass.
3. Ramzaeva T.G. Russian language. 2. - M.: Bustard.

1. Mysait1.ucoz.ru ().
2. Nsportal.ru ().
3. Festival of Pedagogical Ideas " Public lesson" ().

• Klimanova L.F., Babushkina T.V. Russian language. 2. - M.: Enlightenment, 2012. Part 2. Do ex. 103 S.82, 111 S. 83.
• Divide the words into two columns: proper nouns and common nouns.

Baikal, balcony, Balkans, squirrel, Belkin, squirrel, Belov, bun, Bulkina.

• * Using the knowledge gained in the lesson, come up with 5 sentences that describe the picture. At the same time, use at least 5 proper names. Carefully write with a pencil above all nouns: sob.(own) or nar.(noun).

Rice. 11. Children in the forest ()