Common Proper

Common and Proper Nouns

Type	Definition	Capitalised?	Examples
Common noun	Names a general class or category of person, place, or thing	No	river, city, teacher, book, mountain
Proper noun	Names a specific, one-of-a-kind person, place, or thing	Always	Ganga, Mumbai, Mrs Sharma, Mahabharata

Rule of thumb: If you need to point to a specific one out of many → proper noun.

There are millions of rivers, but only one Ganga.

Category	Examples
Persons	teacher, doctor, mother, student
Places	city, village, mountain, river, country
Things	book, chair, phone, flower
Animals	dog, parrot, elephant

Category	Examples
People's names	Priya, Arjun, Dr. Radhakrishnan
Places	Delhi, Amazon, Himalayas, Pacific Ocean
Books / Films / Artworks	Harry Potter, Ramayana, Taare Zameen Par
Organisations	ISRO, United Nations, Wipro
Days, months	Monday, June, Diwali
Historical events	World War II, Indian Independence
Languages / Nationalities	Hindi, English, Indian, Japanese

Always capitalise the first letter of every proper noun

Ganges (not ganges), India (not india)
Names of holidays and festivals → capitalise

Eid, Christmas, Holi, Pongal
Titles before names → capitalise

Mr Kapoor, Dr Singh, President Biden (but: "the president spoke" — no name → lowercase)
Directions as names → capitalise

North India (region name) vs "go north" (direction)

Identify and classify all nouns:

"Every summer, Riya and her mother take a train to Chennai to visit their grandparents."

Noun	Type
summer	proper (season name — capitalised only when named specifically)
Riya	proper
mother	common
train	common
Chennai	proper
grandparents	common

Correct the capitalisation:

❌ "she went to the river ganges near varanasi." ✓ "She went to the River Ganga near Varanasi."

Mistake	Fix
"my mother is a doctor" as proper	mother/doctor = common; only capitalise if used as a name: "I told Mother"
"river ganga" (lowercase)	Ganga is a proper noun → River Ganga
Capitalising all nouns	Only proper nouns get capitals, not all nouns

Underline and classify: "The students of our school went to the Taj Mahal in Agra."
Correct: "she reads the ramayan every tuesday with her aunt meena."
Is "God" a proper noun? When and why?
Write 5 proper noun + common noun pairs (e.g., Amazon / river).
Stretch: Rewrite this sentence with all proper nouns replaced by common nouns: "Ravi and Sita crossed the Brahmaputra on a Saturday morning in January." What is lost?