Capitalized Common Nouns Derived From Proper Nouns
Proper nouns may be used as common nouns, as members of a unique class of common nouns. For example, the corporation Toyota builds vehicles which are colloquially called Toyotas; the fact that the latter is a common noun can be seen in how it can be modified: a Toyota, my Toyota, many Toyotas. Such uses typically arise through ellipsis or metonymy: a car made by Toyota → a Toyota car → a Toyota. Similarly with nationalities and members of religions: America and Christ are proper nouns, American and Christian are not, but retain the capitalization of the proper nouns they are based on. In many languages, such derivations lose the capitalization.
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Famous quotes containing the words common, nouns, derived and/or proper:
“Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church Militant here in earth.”
—Book Of Common Prayer, The. Holy Communion, “Prayer for the Church Militant,” (1662)
“All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble or centuple use and meaning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“These are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)