Skip to content
Learning path

You are now in a learningpath:
Nouns

Proper Nouns vs. Common Nouns

CC BY-SA 4.0

Nouns belong to two main groups: proper nouns and common nouns.

Common nouns (Norw. Fellesnavn) refer to things, people and places in general: boy, girl, apple, soul, school, car, idea, country, river, month.

Proper nouns (Norw. Egennavn) include names of people, countries, places, days of the week, months of the year, historical events, terms of address, holidays and religions.

They are spelt with a capital letter: Peter, Paris, the Pacific Ocean, Sunday, Ms, Jew, Catholic, the Civil War, Christmas, America, Norwegian, April.

Watch the short animation below to learn more about capital letters.

Exercise

Proper nouns and common nouns 2

CC BY-SA 4.0Written by: Knut Inge Skifjeld.
Last revised date 01/17/2019