- Persons:
- Chika, father, girl, friend, teacher, etc.
- Animals:
- dog, monkey, rat, bird, lion. etc.
- Places:
- Enugu, Nigeria, Russia, home, etc.
- Objects:
- television, chair, house, fridge, book, etc.
- Substances:
- air, water, gas, iron, food, etc.
- Qualities:
- humility, love, wickedness, kindness, strength, etc.
- Actions:
- praying, sleeping, reading, walking, dancing, etc.
- Measures:
- year, day, month, litre, pinch, etc.
Classification of Nouns
We shall have two broad classifications of nouns. In the first classification, we have such nouns as common noun, proper noun, collective noun and abstract noun. Under the second classification, we have countable and uncountable noun.
Common Noun
A name is said to be common when it is a general name given to each member of a group of persons or things that are of the same class or kind, or that share some common characteristics or features. Take, for instance, the word, "car", it is a common name. It belongs to a class of objects of transportation, which has four wheels, and seats for a small number of people. Therefore, anything that has above descriptions belongs to this class of car, and as a result, whatever you call it here, and you see anything elsewhere that is the same or similar to it, you still call it the same name. This thus informs the reason you see a car in the street, you call it car, you go to the market and see anything like what you saw in your street, you still call it car; to your village, and you witness a thing of this nature, you call it car and so on. Other examples of common nouns are television, girl, boy, house, man, book, cup, student, home, watch, leg, hand, head, clothes, cap, goat, pen, etc.
Proper Noun
Having known what a common noun is, we can, therefore, use it to understand the meaning of proper noun very well. In definition, we say a proper is a name for distinction, differentiation o uniqueness. In other words, a proper noun is a name we give to a common noun to make it different from others in the same group or class. As mentioned earlier, a "car" is a common name, but to make one car different from another, we have Mercedes, Bugatti, Nissan, Toyota, etc. Each of these names is proper because it differentiates one car from another, thus making the speaker specific instead of general. Further, we have something like soap, a common name to a solid object that foams, which is used with water to remove dirt from an object, but Aura, Premier, Imperier, etc, are proper nouns because they are given to varieties of soaps to make each different from the other. The same thing is applicable to you, as a person. Your name is a proper noun given to you to make you different from me and other persons.
