PROPER NAMES

[Archived Topic]

DEAREST WORD WIZARD,





HELLO! I'M DESPERATE, I NEED YOUR HELP, AND I'M HERE TO ASK

YOU A QUESTION I KNOW YOU CAN ANSWER. PLEASE! I HAVE A FRIEND I'M REALLY INTERESTED IN AND WE'RE BOTH TRYING TO BREAK EACH OTHER'S RIDDLE. THE ONE SHE GAVE ME WAS, "WHAT IS A PROPER NAME WITH 9 LETTERS AND IT HAS 2 E'S AND 2 N'S IN IT?". PLEASE HELP ME! I'M NOT FAMILIAR OR EVEN KNOW WHAT A PROPER NAME IS, WORD WIZARD COME TO MY RESCUE BEFORE I GO CRAZY. THANKS,I DO APPRECIATE IT!

PLEASE REPLY IN A HURRY, I'M DESPERATE TO KNOW.



P.S.

I REALLY LIKE THIS GIRL. YOUR LOYAL SUPPORTER,

TYLER

Submitted by TYLER SMITH-JR. (L A - U.S.A.)

[Jonathon Green]

Help. Moral blackmail alert! OK. A proper name is something like 'Tyler Smith Jr' or as the Oxford English Dictionary has it:





'Applied to a name or noun which is used to designate a particular individual object (e.g. a person, a tame animal, a star, planet, country, town, river, house, ship, etc.). A proper name is written with an initial capital letter. The same proper name may be borne by many persons in different families or generations, or by several places in different countries or localities; but it does not connote any qualities common to and distinctive of the persons or things which it denotes. A proper name may however receive a connotation from the qualities of an individual so named, and be used as a common noun, as a Hercules, a Cæsar (Kaiser, Czar), a Calvary, an atlas.'





So now you know.





The next problem is the riddle. I fear you may be in for summoning up your best charm offensive here since even the WW, duly grateful for your support, isn't very good at word games. Its probably a US state, although lots seem to have the requisite two x 'n' not so many have the e's. Anyway, good luck.

[Edwin F Ashworth]

Looking for references endorsing or decrying the concept of multi-word nouns, I came across the following in the current Wikipedia article on proper nouns at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun (bolding mine):

A distinction is normally made in current linguistics between proper nouns and proper names. By this strict distinction, because the term noun is used for a class of single words (tree, beauty), only single-word proper names are proper nouns: Peter and Africa are both proper names and proper nouns; but Peter the Great and South Africa, while they are proper names, are not proper nouns.

Obviously, the author isn't in the multi-word noun camp.

Perhaps he doesn't use the term compound noun either.