Talk:Proper noun/Archive 2

Merge?
It is proposed that Proper noun (to which Proper name redirects) and Proper name (philosophy) be merged into one article. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:29, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Update: During the discussion period, the Proper name (philosophy) article has been redeveloped enough to stand as a separate article (as of 7 June 2015). The principle remaining concerns are 1) lack of any coverage of the philosophy angle (e.g. with a summary and ) in Proper noun; 2) the question of moving this to Proper name, since it covers proper names generally, not just their noun forms; and perhaps 3) a severance at Proper name (philosophy) from more general treatment of proper names, that may reflect original research or at least fail to take into account reliable sources that treat the concepts as intimately related.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that before accusing others of OR you ought to somehow produce those reliable sources that you claim treat the topics as intimately related. Because accusations without supporting evidence are not nice. In grammar Proper names and proper nouns are distinct things, and the former is a subcategory of the latter. There is no basis for moving proper noun to proper name. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:37, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I already provided a bunch of sources in that regard (text-search the page for "Simons" to jump to them). Not interested in quarreling with you here about that any further. It's also pointless to continue discussing a move-or-not when so much has changed in one day, mooting the entire discussion for the short term. No merge is necessary or feasible at this point, so any rename discussion would be a separate RM, not part of a merge discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Survey

 * I feel that the entire Proper name (philosophy) article should be merged into this article because the former article is not only unsourced and has hardly been touched, but it is filled with original research (complete with first-person speak).  Erpert  blah, blah, blah... 04:36, 24 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge the other way around Merge both into an article titled Proper name, and remove unsourced material from both, using this article as the main text to work from. Erpert, this article (Proper noun) is mostly unsourced, too. While it cites several sources, they actually source very little of the article, which is full of made-up examples that push a point of view. We need to instead think about what will make the best encyclopedia article when it's properly written, which neither of these is.  "Proper noun" is a grammar-school oversimplification of proper naming.  All proper nouns are proper names, but not vice versa. The base form of a proper name is the proper noun, but virtually any of them can also take the form of proper adjectives ("Italian", "Kafkaesque", etc.), many can be turned into verbs or adverbs, as well.  Ergo, the central concept is the proper name, not noun.  Next, this article, despite its name, actually addresses more than nouns, so it is trying sloppily to be an article on proper names, not nouns exclusively. Third, proper name redirects here already, so the intent is that it cover proper names.  Fourth, no one has actually established any such thing as what Proper name (philosophy) implies, namely a completely distinct idea in philosophy called the "proper name" that has to be disambiguated from the same-named concept in linguistics and grammar; that idea appears to be nonsense, and the split of the article is clearly a WP:POVFORK. Furthermore, as far as I can determine, all debates and controversies about proper nouns are or derive from more central debates about proper names in general. I.e., no one (on WP or off) is really arguing about the "noun" part, but the "proper" part, e.g. what defines an actual name vs. a descriptive phrase or label, whatever "part of speech" it happens to be in any given case.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)


 * This article should be moved to Proper name (currently a redirect), with Proper name (philosophy) merged in. —David Levy 22:20, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's basically what I'm proposing, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:29, 30 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Support. I agree with merging them. They are not, as has been asserted condescendingly on this page in years past, separate topics; they are logically aspects of a whole. By the way, though, I just have to refute the assertion that examples in the current version, many of which I contributed or revised (although they've been substantially reworked since then by others), are there to "push a point of view". Forget Floor 3 if that one troubles you. Look at all the rest, such as south pole (specific designator) versus South Pole (proper name). Quercus solaris (talk) 00:44, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Support The concepts are at least concordant enough to support the merge, though proper name (philosophy), contrary to some statements above, is indeed sourced and some of that sourcing is used to good effect, so I hope due effort will be exercised in merging the content in question into the unified article. I'd also argue strongly for maintaining this name space ("Proper noun") as the home for the article, as it is overwhelmingly the most common nomenclature for the term and, more importantly, the one used almost universally by our sources. Certainly reference to (and contextualization) for the term "proper name" should be included, but I think it's quite too-far a step towards compromise in trying to merge the concepts to adopt the other article's principle title over the present title of this article.  S n o w  let's rap 00:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Support – I don't much care in which direction or whether the result is called Proper noun or Proper name, but one article please, and clean up the informalities of the philosophy article in the merge, if someone is up for it.  There's a useful source for some of this kind of analysis in this book that another editor pointed out some place I've forgotten.  Dicklyon (talk) 00:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Support – I don't have an opinion (because I don't have enough information) on whether it should be entitled "proper name" or "proper noun" but I don't see any separate topic in the (Philosophy) article. Actually, I can't find much in that article worth keeping at all; I found it incomprehensible and was unable to discern the points, if any it was meant to make.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose they do not seem to be synonymous or even similar. Proper name (philosophy) is a philosophical concept, proper noun is a grammatical concept. --Mr. Guye (talk) 00:48, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * A proper name is a linguistic concept as well. A proper noun is simply a proper name applied as a noun rather than an adjective or whatever (and it's almost always the base form of a proper name). The philosophy article covers (poorly) the approach in philosophy literature to the same concept.  In theory one could develop a separate, proper article on the treatment of proper names in philosophy, per WP:SPLIT, if there was enough material. But this has not happened; it's just a WP:POVFORK.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Support – We should merge this whichever direction will (hopefully) achieve consensus. I also agree that both articles need sourced material and needs to be written in a clear and accessible form, keeping neutrality in mind. Hopefully someone out there is up to the task. Lozen8 (talk) 02:44, 17 April 2015 (UTC)'
 * Strongly Oppose - Those are two different things. A proper noun is a function of language. Sometimes Philosophers will think of terms to use, and all agree on them. I don't think this merge is a good idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OhWhyNot (talk • contribs) 05:31, 9 May 2015
 * See response above, to Mr. Guye.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The philosophical discussion maybe warrant a subsection within the article on proper nouns, but it also deserves a standalone article where it can be developed more. Further argumentation: Proper nouns is a linguistic category that is opposed to common nouns - in linguistic proper names are different from proper nouns. In linguistics there is literature about how proper nouns are learned as contrasted with common nouns, there is literature about how different languages grammatically and syntactically distinguish between proper and common nouns etc. In Philosophy the debate about proper names is about semantics and logic - not about grammar, and proper names are treated as a logical category not a grammatical one. The two topics are separate both in their definitions, and in the bodies of literature that describe them. It is a very thin argument to consider two disciplinary perspectives on a similar but not identical topic to be a case of POV-fork. That is quite simply not what POV-fork means, because the division is not the result of a POV conflict among editors, but simply a result of there being two substantial but mostly non-overlapping bodies of literature about a subject that is related, but not identical. Currently the article Proper noun consists almost entirely of discussion about capitalization norms in English orthography - I would suggest splitting this out to an article Proper noun (orthography) since it has little relevance or relation to either the linguistic or philosophical topic. That way the main article could be about the grammar and linguistics of proper nouns, with disambiguation links to the pages on the philosophical and orthographical topics, which could also be summarized in subsections if deemed necessary.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Whether it should have a properly developed article or not isn't at issue here. It does not, and Proper name (philosophy) will almost certainly be deleted at WP:AFD if it isn't merged. The question is whether to try to save anything at that article and merge it into this one, or just let it die.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I dont see that article as likely to be deleted, no. There are clearly substantial third party sources about the concept of proper names in philosphy. The current quality of the article is irrelevant for the question of whether it should be deleted. The topic and the philosophical problem it represents is notable separately from the linguistic category of the same/similar name.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, see above; many clearly disagree, and have said why. You observed yourself that the treatment of proper names/nouns in philosophy could "warrant a subsection" here, which means that the philosophy approach to the topic is a subtopic of the subject of this article. No one appears to be satisfied with the content of the philosophy stub. Wouldn't it make sense to merge the actually sourceable material (which is very little of it) at the stub into this article as a section, and then see over time whether anyone has sufficient interest and materials to develop a proper philosophy split-off article, per WP:SUMMARY?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I have rewritten the article so that it now provides an overview of the philosophical question, links to the different major theories of proper names and their proponents and some references. It took me about 20 minutes, about the same time it would have taken to read and respond to your walls of text below. And probably only a fraction of the total editing time having been consumed by this merge discussion.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:23, 7 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: See administrator note at Talk:Proper name: 'contribs) moved page Talk:Proper name to Talk:Proper name (philosophy) without leaving a redirect (Nearly all the links to this title are about capitalized nouns, not philosophy). This further suggests that what is presently Proper noun should be at Proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment The article is now substantially longer than when this discussion began, includes sources and is written in a more encyclopedic tone. I invite everyone to revisit the article and then reconsider their !votes.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

*Merge tomorrow No new insight, really, it just seems like the thing to do, after reading the above. Proper name, of course. For what little it's worth, Monday's a proper name to me. No two are the same. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Abstain In light of the update above splitting this into three things, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be doing here. So I can't make an informed choice. I still know Mondays are unique. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:39, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

After Maunus's rewrite of Proper name (philosophy)

 * That is certainly an improvement, and probably saved Proper name (philosophy) from AFD. Doesn't change the fact that it's an unnecessary WP:POVFORK. One article can still treat proper naming generally, and including philosophical positions on the matter. The present article Proper noun should still move to Proper name, and at very least should include a WP:SUMMARY-style section on philosophy material, even if the philosophy article is retained instead of merged. Doing this would resolve the POV nature of the forking, and put an end to a boatload of falsely-injected confusion into the minds of readers (and, frequently, WP editors) that proper names and proper nouns are different topics. If we don't resolve this, it's quite likely that yet another POV fork will occur, trying to treat proper names from a liguistic, sociological, psychological, historical, etc. (i.e. everything but philosophical) perspective, more generally than nouns in particular, and we'll be right back where we started.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:09, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It is not a POV fork they are two separate topics. The linguistic category and the philosophical debate have very little incommon and represent two entirely different bodies of literature with almost no overlap. Proper noun should stay at proper noun because linguistics distinguish between proper nouns and proper names. So no.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Linguistics [a singular noun, BTW] does not distinguish between proper nouns and proper names, other than noting the former is a subset of the latter. You're badly over-reaching here.  The fact that you've sourced the philosophy article in a way that (despite being overall good work) seeks to isolate it from linguistics to prevent the merge doesn't change any underlying facts.  That's called cherry-picking, and it's actually simply further evidence that this is a POV fork.  That said, I'll concede that a total merge is essentially off the table at this point. There's enough material to support a separate philosophy article now, though it needs to be adjusted to undo the anti-everything-but-philosophy bias that has been introduced.  This does not preclude the article presently at Proper noun moving to Proper name, and/or including a summary of the conceptualization of proper names in philosophy; it would be a poor article if it did not.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC) PS: A trivial proof that linguistics and philosophy are not totally severable, in general or on this issue: The journal Linguistics and Philosophy, founded in 1977, which regularly has articles on proper names from both linguistic and philosophical viewpoints, often simultaneously in the same article, e.g. "On the Linguistic Complexity of Proper Names", Ora Matushansky, Ling. and Phil. 31:5 (2008), pp. 573–627.  Some of these go back to its early days, too: "Causality, Referring, and Proper Names", David S. Schwarz, Ling. and Phil. 2:2 (1978) pp. 225–233; this isn't some novel idea.  Another cross-disciplinary example is "Traditional Theories of Proper Names", John L. Pollock, in Language and Thought (2014), Princeton U. Pr., pp. 40–54.  We find journal articles in various disciplines, from sociology to psychology, English literature studies to anthropology, all treating proper names/nouns from a combined linguistic and philosophic viewpoint.  A sharp divide between them on Wikipedia is an exercise in original research. The principal difference in approach is that philosophy focuses on the rationale behind and nature of proper names, while linguistics looks at the roles proper names play in language and our use of it, naturally focusing on their noun forms, since other forms (adjectival) etc., are derived.  By comparison, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and sociology would all look at team sports from different, respective viewpoints, but that doesn't mean that basketball is somehow transformed into a different encyclopedia topic when we address its treatment in different kinds of academic disciplines.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the gratuitous condescension that I have by now come to expect of you, and thanks also for actually looking at literature about the topic you discuss which I have come to not expect of you, but which is nonetheless nice for a change. The fact that two articles in journals about the intersection of philosophy and linguistics treat proper names is of course not evidence of anything except that there is such a thing as philosophy of language where linguistic and philosophical topics intersect. And no, the topics are not "totally severable" and I have not claim they are, but I have claimed that they are only partly overlapping which is correct. In the philosopy of language no one cares about how proper nouns differ from common nouns and mass nouns or the syntactic differences between them. And in linguistics noone cares about the descriptive versus causal theory of naming (indeed the whole debate seems somewhat silly and naive to a linguist). And no, this is not OR, it is something else called "knowing what one is talking about" which comes from having spent time reading and studying a topic. That is something quite interesting and pleasant and I recommend that you try it one day. I will not comment any more in this discussion, but instead dedicate my energies to producing content for our readers. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:49, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * We at last agree on something: The topics are partially overlapping. This is the very reason to cover the philosophy approach at least in summary at this article, or our readers will not even understand how they overlap.  I notice the addition of the cognition and acquisition material, so you seem to also be wanting to develop this article to be more comprehensive, per WP:SUMMARY. I'm going to take this as a sign we won't be working at cross purposes.  Cobbling together a semblance of a proper article at the other page with a handful of sources and a day or so  "about 20 minutes" of reading doesn't magically mean one has achieved "knowing what one is talking about", however.  The suggestion that 'In the philosop[h]y of language no one cares about how proper nouns differ from common nouns' is a clear demonstration. Philosophy journals and books frequently address this very topic; e.g.: "Logic and Common Nouns", P.M. Simons, Analysis 38(4): 161–7 (Oct. 1978); "Common and Proper" (chapter), Walter Hirtle, Making Sense Out of Meaning, McGill/Queen's U. Pr. (2013); Peter M. Simons; "The Property-theoretical, Performative-nominalistic Theory of Proper Names", Francesco Orilia, Dialectica 54(3): 155-176 (2000): "It is proposed that a proper name 'W' is a sortal common noun whose meaning is essentially tied ..."; "An Observation on Common Names and Proper Names", John Tienson, Analysis, 46(2): 73-76 (Mar. 1986); "The Logic of Common Nouns: An Investigation in Quantified Modal Logic", Anil Gupta, Journal of Philosophy 79(9): 512–517 (Sep. 1982); and on and on.  The aforementioned Linguistics and Philosophy practically overflows with such material (and with the stuff you say linguists don't care about; I repeat that the very existence of that journal at all disproves the notion that these fields do not understand each other and do not share and commingle ideas).  Way more to the point of  article rather than the one you've been working on more, so do journals in cognitive science, child development, neuroscience, etc., etc.  Treating the topic of proper names as some kind of "linguistics vs. philosophy" pissing match is why these articles have unhelpfully diverged for so long (see timeline below).  Proper names are a general topic of study in wide variety of fields, and they generally all involve some degree of philosophy. I'm glad you are concentrating, as you say, on producing content.  But this: 'And no, this is not OR, it is something else called "knowing what one is talking about" which comes from having spent time reading and studying a topic.' – well, it sounds like exactly what WP:NOR is talking about: using actual or assumed personal knowledge of a field to analyze/evaluate/interpret/synthesize claims from primary sources, rather than getting them from secondary sources. How many secondary sources have you cited at Proper name (philosophy)? I'm not saying the article hasn't improved, but more care may be needed in primary-source usage. PS: "Condescension"? You mean like "which I have come to not expect of you", etc.?  Please see WP:KETTLE, LOL.   — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Other disciplines than linguistics & philosophy

 * Source: "Proper name" is also used, in a manner consistent with this article, in other disciplines, e.g. cognitive psychology:

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:10, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Relevant timeline of the two articles
This illustrates the nature of the POVforking and why we have the mess we do at present. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 4 June 2001 - A page was created at Proper name; it was not an encyclopedia article, but a copy-paste of most of an essay and commentary called "Larry's Text" from the earliest times of Wikimedia, before Wikipedia and Meta had split, before talk pages even existed. It was general in nature, but did already include plenty of philosophy material.
 * 3 July 2002 - A stub was created at Proper noun, using the linguistics approach. Note that nothing akin to an actual article existed at Proper name at this date, just some guy Larry's musings and some talk-page-style commentary on it.
 * 12 June 2003 - Beginning of attempts to develop Proper name in an encyclopedic direction, with all new material inserted before all the "Larry's Text" material, and entirely focusing on philosophy. Whether intentional or not, this was a POVfork. What should have happened here is the "Larry" chatter should have moved to the talk page or been deleted, and Proper name and Proper noun material combined.
 * 25 April 2004 - The bulk of "Larry's Text", reworked, was moved into the new article Sense and reference (which is a proper article today), and Proper name finally looked something like a regular Wikipedia article.
 * 5 November 2004 - The Proper noun stub was redirected without explanation to Noun (which looked like this).
 * 20 October 2006 - A new, more developed stub was introduced at Proper noun, again with a linguistic focus, and based on Noun as it had been for a while; the section at Noun became Noun, which then looked like this, a more prose-paragraph approach than the stub. This good-faith WP:SPLIT, along the lines we now document at WP:SUMMARY, was also a second, probably accidental POVfork, deepening the divide between Proper noun and Proper name.
 * 5 April 2009 - The article now at Proper name (philosophy) was moved there from Proper name by an admin, and that short title was redirected to Proper noun: "Nearly all the links to this title are about capitalized nouns, not philosophy".  That really remains the crux of the issue to this day. Very few readers or editors are looking for the philosophy-of-language onomastics material (which is what that is, as we'll soon see).
 * 7 September 2010 - Material from Proper noun (as it had been developing) and Noun were combined into a proper article after another attempt to blank the one and redirect it to the other. It was explicitly disambiguated from Proper name (philosophy), so at this point the editorial pools at both articles knew they were working on partially overlapping material. Then the real trouble began.
 * 3 July 2012 - By this point, some editors are trying to ensure that coverage at this one (Proper noun, to which Proper name redirects, along with Common noun) covers the material broadly without pushing a particular linguistics POV. These efforts are met with some resistance, leading to editwarring. as well as some compromise . But philosophy is largely glossed over: 'The study of proper names is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology; for a survey of detailed and pragmatic issues in naming see Name. Rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper names is a matter for philosophy of language; see Proper name (philosophy).'  We still have that treatment in the article today, instead of a proper summary of the philosophy material (which has recently been rewritten and sourced and is no longer a WP:AFD target).
 * 8 October 2012 - The Proper noun article stabilized for a while, still with a possibly PoV-pushing linguistics perspective, but plenty of coverage in other fields, including cognition and language acquisition, etc., just not philosophy. Although one of the most active editors of the article retired from Wikipedia around this time, the article remained quite similar a year later . A year later again, not much has changed.
 * 10 May 2015 - Meanwhile, the Proper name (philosophy) article saw virtually no development for years, despite being flagged a pile of unsourced, unencyclopedically written OR.
 * 7 June 2015 - Today, the Proper name (philosophy) has had many of these problems resolved, but is even further divided topically from the content at Proper noun. This is good for the former article's content, but points out how inadequate the coverage in the latter article is, treating (wrongly) the philosophy approach to proper names as if it were some unrelated topic.
 * 7 June 2015 - Today, the Proper noun / Proper name article has been reorganized a little, e.g. so that cognition and acquisition (socio-psychological topics more than linguistic ones) are in a separate section. This is a solid move toward WP:SUMMARY style, and the first major step in a long time to having Proper name be more comprehensive instead of "the linguistics tine" of a Proper noun / Proper name (philosophy) POVfork.  The still-extant "see elsewhere" commentary about philosophy indicates that the philosophy article itself has a comprehensiveness problem even in that field, since it may only be addressing "rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper names" from a philosophy of language viewpoint, which is not all of philosophy, and doesn't encompass all philosophy has to say about proper names, some of which could have been covered at Name but isn't at present (I haven't dug around in its history).

Now what, for this article?
Much of the above is moot at this point. I think the only thing to do now is work this article better from a WP:SUMMARY standpoint, so that it includes the kernel of the Proper name (philosophy) material, and is further expanded with treatment in other fields. It should still move to Proper name, but I guess there's no hurry. I have no particular bone to pick with the WP:FAITACCOMPLI editing spree at Proper name (philosophy) that mooted the merge discussion by making a merge impractical at best. WP:PROCESS can be important, but it does take a back seat to public-facing encyclopedic content production, and it is certainly true that Proper name (philosophy) is better now than it was a few days ago. But we're still left with what to do with this article, since we need a general overview of proper names (including but not limited to proper nouns as "parts of speech" as most people were taught in school to conceive them). If anything is a field-specific little subtopic, it's the treatment of proper names as a class of nouns for syntactic analysis as such in linguistics (and I say that as someone with a degree in anthropology and linguistics). That can't reasonably be the main gist of WP's article on proper names, and we're already moving away from that (Maunus actually beat me to starting that, by adding the "Acquisition and cognition" section, covering stuff I was already gathering material for. :-) Some of the linguistic detail from 2012 has been lost, despite reliable sourcing. A Proper noun (linguistics) article could eventually WP:SPLIT from this after further development, and explore that material better. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Words derived from proper nouns
The paragraph beginning "Words or phrases derived from proper names are generally capitalized, even when they are not themselves proper names" doesn't seem right. If "Londoner" and "African" are capitalized only because they're derived from proper nouns "London" and "Africa", then how do we explain "Basque" instead of "basque", "Celt" instead of "celt", "Mohawk" instead of "mohawk", and "Bedouin" instead of "bedouin"? If there's some other rule that explains the capitalization of those words, then why would "Londoner" and "African" not fall under that rule as well? Largoplazo (talk) 17:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Huh?? All except perhaps Bedouin are not "words or phrases derived from proper names" but just proper names. Basque (clothing) is a tad puzzling, because it is a word derived from a proper name, but is not capitalized. But that doesn't seem to be your point. Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 21 March 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: consensus not to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 17:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Proper noun → Common and proper nouns – This article should be called Common and proper nouns because it talks about common nouns which are not proper nouns. It would make sense to keep the current title if common nouns were proper nouns, but they're not. If consensus is against moving this page, I request that this article be split into Common noun and Proper noun. 2601:183:101:58D0:B9FF:B9A9:B798:4BA9 (talk) 17:18, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And Common noun redirects here, which you might have said. But the article is about 95% on proper nouns. I'm against a split. Johnbod (talk) 18:54, 21 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose perfectly fine as is. In ictu oculi (talk) 21:54, 21 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose a move per User:Johnbod and oppose a split. The body of the article is about proper nouns.  Common nouns exist only in juxtaposition against/with/to proper nouns; otherwise, they're just nouns.  No need for another article.  —  AjaxSmack  01:39, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose, vast majority of the article is about proper nouns. Artix Kreiger (talk) 15:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Uniqueness
This anonymous edit of December 2018, made without any edit summary or Talk page discussion to explain the motivation, seems to have removed the idea that a proper noun (at least ordinarily) refers to a single unique entity. This change seems rather dubious to me, and I have basically reverted it in this edit. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:54, 31 July 2019 (UTC)