Is the Earth a proper or common noun?

Question

I guess the website got this wrong. It says that the Earth is a common noun. In my view it should be a proper noun. Please see the screenshot.

The earth moves round the sun.

• Earth is a common noun
• Earth is an abstract noun
• Earth is a proper noun

Look it up in a dictionary before asking others for help, please. — Dan Bron, Sep 12 '19 at 05:41
Duplicate of What is the correct capitalization of the words 'earth' and 'moon'?////// Duplicate of When is it correct to capitalise 'earth'? — Edwin Ashworth, Sep 12 '19 at 18:02
The question needs tightening; 'E/earth' and 'the E/earth' are different entities. — Edwin Ashworth, Sep 20 '19 at 16:48

Mari-Lou A · Answer 1 · 2019-09-13T07:21:52.197

1

The question is asking whether "earth" in “The earth moves [a]round the sun” is a common or proper noun. If the authors had capitalized it, then technically, the answer would have been "proper noun".

Proper nouns do not normally take a determiner. For example,

Let's go to Paris on Thursday.
I left Washington last night.
Did you visit Lake Como in July?
Her favourite movie is, When Harry Met Sally.

BUT there are exceptions

Have you ever seen the Amazon River?
I saw special gift subscriptions on The New York Times.

However, these proper nouns are always capitalised whereas earth is also a common noun and a synonym of soil, land, dirt, ground, terrain etc.

edited Sep 13 '19 at 07:21

answered Sep 12 '19 at 08:13

Mari-Lou A

91,183

River in "the Amazon river" is not capitalized. – Kris Sep 12 '19 at 11:54
1

@Kris I always check these things before posting, and on Wikipedia it is capitalised https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River as is Apurímac River, Mantaro River , Ucayali River, Solimões River ... see also Britannica Encyclopedia: The Amazon River is located in the northern portion of South America, flowing from west to east. – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 11:56
Context! "Four centuries after the European discovery of the Amazon river, the total cultivated area ...." [ibid]. – Kris Sep 12 '19 at 12:00
and for good measure Learn all there is to know about this incredible ecosystem and make your Amazon River visit in South America all the more rewarding. – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 12:07
We are into the English language for now. And backdoor promotions are just wrong. – Kris Sep 12 '19 at 12:20
BUT there are exceptions
Have you ever seen the Amazon?
– Edwin Ashworth Sep 12 '19 at 16:00
Rainforest or river? @EdwinAshworth – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 16:01
Hey, I'm supporting you here. Try the Limpopo. There are plenty of proper nouns that take the definite article (sometimes also capitalised). One is the Great Saint Bernard Pass {Britannica}. But why answer and close-vote for duplicity? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 12 '19 at 16:06
@EdwinAshworth sorry, seemed you were supporting Kris's comment. – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 16:09
@EdwinAshworth the question is not off topic, it's a duplicate and I'd prefer to see it closed as such. However, so far it's a tie: 2 (dupe) 2 (off topic). Not sure what to do, I might retract the close vote and see how it moves on from there. – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 17:14
The only proper choice is which dupe to cite. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 12 '19 at 18:06
Some flexibility is permissible, originally this was a comment and then I threw caution to the wind and posted it as an answer. – Mari-Lou A Sep 12 '19 at 18:13

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

As I understand it (although to me it is somewhat ambiguous so apologies if I have misunderstood) the answer provided by @Mari-LouA implies that if the word “earth” is not capitalized it is not a proper noun, even where it refers to the planet, as in the King James Bible (Math 24:35):

Heaven and earth shall pass away…

and in many other examples in answers to the SE question on the spelling of earth/Earth both with and without the definite article.

If so, I would disagree. It seems to me to come down to the distinction between what is a ‘proper noun’ and what are the consequences of a word being a proper noun. Let us look at a standard definition, e.g. from SE ELU tag.

A proper noun or proper name is a capitalized noun representing a unique entity as opposed to a common noun, which represents a class of entities or non-unique instances of that class.

And Lexico has a similar definition in which both the description and the orthography are part of the definition.

On this basis earth can be neither a proper noun (not capitalized) nor a common noun (represents a unique entity).

This seems to me neither proper logic nor common sense.

My answer (supported by common sense and the rather long abstract from the Wikipedia article below) is:

The earth (and sun and moon) when used to refer to the planet in common writing (rather than technical astronomical writing where they lack a determiner and are capitalized) is a proper noun because it refers to a unique entity. The fact that it is not capitalized is exceptional but merely an irregularity in language and orthography.

Is this important linguistically? I may be wrong, but I am unaware of any other reason to classify nouns as proper or common other than orthography. If I am correct (he ducks) then this is a useful help for orthography but not an infallible rule. This is English. Who is surprised?

Abstract from Wikipedia entry (with my emphasis)

A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity, such as London, Jupiter, Sarah, or Microsoft, as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities …The detailed definition of the term is problematic and, to an extent, governed by convention.

…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.

…In English and many other languages, proper names and words derived from them are associated with capitalization; but the details are complex, and vary from language to language.

Coda

I suppose I should propose a change in the tag, assuming I have enough rep to do so:

A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity as opposed to a common noun, which represents a class of entities or non-unique instances of that class. Proper nouns are generally capitalized in English, but there are a few (e.g. earth) which are not.

I'm afraid you're confusing a noun with a noun phrase. When 'the earth' or 'the Earth' refers to planet Earth, it's not the noun 'earth' or 'Earth' but the noun phrase 'the earth' or 'the Earth' that "refers to a unique entity". Any NP with a common noun as its head and a definite determiner (e.g., the) can refer to a unique entity: the book, the car, the town, the planet, etc. — JK2, Sep 20 '19 at 15:55
@JK2 -— OK, I chose the wrong biblical quotation. How about “ Heaven and earth shall pass away” Math 24:35. Noun phrase? — David, Sep 20 '19 at 16:03
@JK2 The question contains this error. / Some modern theories say that 'the Earth' say is better classed as a determiner phrase. I wonder if we're heading for proper determiners? Proper zero determiners? — Edwin Ashworth, Sep 20 '19 at 16:10
@David The Bible was originally written by whoever was not even aware of the concept of a planet as we know it, so any translation of the Bible into English cannot possibly have meant "earth" as planet Earth. Indeed, 'earth' in your sentence I think means the dry land as opposed to the waters/seas. And 'earth' as the dry land has always been a common non-count noun, which can always be used without any determiner. — JK2, Sep 21 '19 at 06:21
@JK2 — I think your comments relate to the origin of the current usage, discussed in the question I cited. However even that usage has the clear sense of referring to a unique entity, and subsequent and current usage (e.g. "move heaven and earth") has a mental association with the planet. I also do not accept your previous argument about noun phrases (whatever they are) because "the planet" is not the same as "the earth": there are many planets but only one called Earth. I'll leave it there, but suggest you might want to frame your own answer, opposing mine. Then people can judge. — David, Sep 21 '19 at 11:47
@David Heaven an earth provides no evidence whatsoever, because coordinate NP's freely occur as bare NPs. Your answer is factually incorrect in any case, because it would exclude "Smiths" in "the Smiths". Don't use dictionaries for grammar advice. It's not what tgey're designed for. — Araucaria - Him, Nov 03 '19 at 09:45

Is the Earth a proper or common noun?

2 Answers2