What is Common Noun with Examples

Noun is one of Parts of Speech in English Grammar. Noun simply represents name of a person, place or a thing. There are different Types of Nouns and common noun is one of them. Common Noun refers to the name, given in common to every person or thing of the same class. Most of the nouns are common noun i.e. Car, Book, Table, Teacher, House, Dog, Music etc. Here in this article the common Noun with examples will be discussed in simple way. (See Eight Parts of Speech).

What is Common Noun?

The Common Nouns are the naming word that does not refer to a specific person or thing but in common of the same class or kind.

For example:

  1. This is a Book.
  2. Joseph is a school Teacher.

In the above sentence, Book, Teacher is a common noun because the words Book, Teacher is the name of the entire class or kind unlike proper noun. Proper Noun indicates to the names of a particular person, place or thing. I.e. Book is common noun whereas the name of the book ‘Bible’ is proper noun.

  • Dog’ ( Common Noun)
  • Name of the dog ‘Nick’ (Proper Noun)

In order to make it clear let’s give another simple example of proper noun:

Bible, Quran, Ramayana are Proper Noun whereas all these noun comes under the same class in common that is ‘Book’. So the word book is common noun.

As we have mentioned the proper noun refers to the name of a particular person, place, objects events.  Your name itself is a proper noun. Proper nouns always begin with capital letter. For examples

  • Denmark:  (D- is capital letter).
  • Amy: (A- is capital letter).
  • Cynthia: (C-is capital letter).

In order to identify the proper noun and common noun in sentence. You have to understand the basic difference between them.

Also read: Countable & Uncountable Noun

What is common noun with examples

Difference between Common and Proper Noun

Common NounProper Noun
Common name of somethingParticular name of something
Common nouns are not capitalized unless they are place at the beginning of a sentence.Proper nouns always capitalize.
Mother, child, family, teacher, man, county, boxes, shoes, water, merchant are common noun.Bible, Rita, Jim, Google, Oxford, Titanic, Akbar, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, England, Monday, are proper noun.
How to Use Common Noun in Sentence?

Common nouns are used to denote a class of object, thing or idea. The word ‘City’ is named as a common noun to denote the name of place. The word ‘city’ is a generic term when we mention the specific name of a city like ‘Milan city’ is a proper noun. A vast majority of nouns are common noun so; anything referring to a thing, idea or object is generally calling them common noun.

Common Noun examples in sentence
  • I bough a book yesterday.
  • Her friend accompanies her.
  • Bina is a school girl.
  • The students of our college have a union.
  • A cow is a useful animal.
  • The gold of this ring is not pure.
  • Have you any money in your pocket?
  • The water of this pond is not clear.
  • The Himalayas are in the north of our country.
  • John is a wonderful player.
  • He has a trained dog named Nick.
  • A mother always loves her children.
  • He has a new car and a beautiful house.
  • I bought new shoes for the party.

Thus, common noun is another Type of Noun which is the common name of something in the same class or kind. It is the opposite of Proper noun. In order to identify the proper noun and common noun, we must know noun and the Use of Noun in Sentence.

Related: