Or is it possible that the beauty of a flower we have seen without knowing its name has moved us to desire further information about it; on hearing the name “rose” we conceptualise it.

– The Temple of Dawn

His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!

– The Little Prince

Nouns are the first kind of words language learners acquire as we have explained elsewhere. There are different types of nouns. A common noun “denotes many individuals and connotes features common to all”. What we see in dictionaries are common nouns: rose – usually prickly shrubs (Merriam-Webster). Imagine a dictionary that defines uncommon nouns – Rose : a prickly person.

Students know nouns to be the name of a person, place or thing. They know they should capitalise the first letter of proper nouns. They apply this knowledge primarily in three components of the English exams. These are synthesis, situational writing and compositions.

This is learning grammar rules on a superficial level. When we conceive of something as a requirement, we try to minimise engagement with it. Name equals upper case first letter and nothing more. There is much more which can be achieved with proper nouns. Grammar is not merely rules. It is a way of organising information and looking at the world. It has real world applications.

To be sure, learning the rules of grammar is important if only because intelligibility and shared understanding is at stake. Contractual interpretation for instance often turns on the arrangement of words within phrases and sometimes on the choice of a single word. It is not uncommon to see disagreement arise because of a preposition or the tense of a verb.

A common misconception about non standard varieties of English such as Singlish is that these are ungrammatical. This is not true. Grammar in essence restricts the types of words which can feature after a preceding word. So long as there are restrictions, a language is grammatical. For example, it will not be grammatical to say, Can lah, meh? Only can lah and can meh are intelligible and therefore acceptable. Singlish has its own grammar. It will however be premature to conclude that merely because grammar imposes restrictions, it is restrictive.

Acquiring a deeper understanding of grammar can on the contrary be liberating and protective. Take fake news for example. In a report published for the eleventh edition of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference on the Web and Social Media (ICWSM), Horne and Adali, (2017) explain that, “Fake titles also used more all capitalized words, significantly more proper nouns, but fewer nouns overall, and fewer stop words.” Recognition of nouns and the ability to distinguish between various noun forms can in this way not only save the effort of time-starved students especially when engaged in self-directed learning but also act as shield against formulation of false beliefs.

To understand the proper noun which, “does not represent a concept, but a thing (a person, a river, etc.), with respect to which the speakers who know it may have feelings” (Saragossa, 2014), we need to understand common nouns. In a report written for the Biblioteca De Politica Linguistica, Saragossa (2014) explains the purpose of common nouns this way: “It seems obvious, perhaps when we look at the world, there are countless objects or entities; and, if each entity had to have a name, we wouldn’t be able to speak”.

In other words, though there are in fact as many common nouns as there are types of things, each individual item in a type does not have a unique name. It is assumed that this would result in cognitive overload. This assumption could be further examined in the light of how teachers operate. A teacher could know the unique names of a hundred children in a given year.

There are at least two other essential differences between nouns and proper nouns. Common nouns have “semantic content” or objective meaning and proper nouns have only subjective connotations or no meaning. What does Alfred mean? Also, common nouns take “restrictive modifiers” (Saragossa, 2014). It is alright to say, a red wall but not, red Alfred.

Students should be familiar with what has been discussed so far. Proper nouns have other uses.

For example, we could say, “Don’t be an Alfred” or “He did an Alfred on me”. Here proper nouns enable what Rami (2015) terms “meaning transfer”. Maybe Alfred is a common friend to the speaker and hearer of the above statements. Maybe Alfred has some salient quality for which he is known; let’s say he is often late for meetings. This shared understanding between speaker and hearer would imbue the above statements with the following meanings respectively, Don’t come late for our meeting and He came late for our meeting just as Alfred often does. Alfred the person has become substitutable with tardiness.

An antique books seller in Singapore once made the following statement to a customer, That’s a Hiroshige. Hiroshige is a proper noun. It represents a Ukiyo-e artist of 18th century Japan. The seller was pointing to a print of an artwork by Hiroshige. Here she was relying on a property of language known as metonymy or when an object is referred to by something associated with it, in this instance, its creator.

Students who wield proper nouns in these other ways would be able to create new meanings.

Understanding nouns can help us make wiser choices in life. Fabra (1956) as cited in Saragossa (2014) suggested that in “the creation of a noun, we go from entities to a species”. A species refers to a group in which members share some similar characteristics. This can be identity forming.

Consider the following excerpt from A Night at Home:

He had confessed himself to be a libertarian and an agnostic. And it was true. He had looked up the meaning of the words – and they were exactly what he was. He had to be. It was what everyone was these days.

While the words libertarian and agnostic are not proper nouns, they are derived from their respective isms– a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory (Merriam-Webster). The isms in question are Libertarianism and Agnosticism.

Though the first letters of isms are capitalised, they are not strictly proper nouns like Alfred or Bishan. These are not common nouns either because they refer to a specific identity.

Along with isms, brand and company names are also identity forming nouns. These can be imbued with prestige or bring to mind some undesirable quality.

For example, Juliet says of Romeo, That which we call a rose, By any other word would smell as sweet. Romeo’s family was feuding with Juliet’s family and his last name was proving to be an intractable impediment. Juliet practised what firms and other individuals practise even today, dissociation and association. She was dissociating Romeo from his family name of Montague because It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man and associating him with a rose. Though the meaning of a rose in the dictionary is prickly shrub, the word’s referent is known for its pleasant fragrance.

She goes as far as beseeching him to O, be some other name! And, Romeo, true to his name, agrees! Henceforth I never will be Romeo. Here, Romeo was able to acquiesce in short order because he felt his name blinded his prospective family to his real identity comprised of his unique qualities. A name change would have taken nothing away from who he truly was.

We see another instance of this in Guy Richie’s Snatch when Avi attempts to hire Bullet Tooth Tony. Avi asks, So, what should I call you? Bullet? Tooth? Bullet Tooth Tony replied, You can call me Susan if it makes you happy.

In these examples, identity is seen as distinct from name or the proper noun. However, from the perspective of those addressing the identified, i.e., Juliet’s family or Avi, and in the words of Yukio Mishima, the author of Temple of Dawn, “The rose first appears as ‘name’; the concept gives rise to imagination” and conceptualisation. This means that a proper noun could become fixed to identity – the person or entity becomes tied to the desirable or undesirable characteristics.

Therefore, there are cases when entities change their names like a snake sheds its skin to dissociate or distance themselves from negative characteristics their previous names had become fixed to.

For example, let’s say entity X engages in a certain set of practices properly named Y. For some reason, Y becomes unfashionable. X gets called out for being Y. X tries for a while to defend Y and when that becomes untenable, calls itself Z instead. Z makes cosmetic changes to its set of practices to justify the name change. Its public would now have lost its teeth so to speak against Z since they would no longer have access to the proper noun Y to level as accusation against Z. However, its public would still find X’s (now known as Z) practices dubious and unsavoury. In this sense a proper and uncommon noun can be weaponised for good or bad.

While a name can be changed without excessive difficulty, the same cannot be said of characteristics. Whether it be in commerce or culture, a unique identity is a prerequisite for independent existence. For this reason, entities create proper nouns and nouns.

Students must be aware of the identity bestowing quality of nouns. Sometimes proper nouns are changed properly and at other times improperly.

A knowledge of nouns will be useful to sniff out the difference.

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