Notes on Nouns

A nouns is the name of any person, place or thing.

Nouns are often improperly called substantives. A substantive is the name of substance only, but a noun is the name either of a substance or quality.

Noun derived from Latin word Nomen signifies name.

The name of anything that exists, whether animate or inanimate, or which we can see, hear, feel, taste, smell or think of, is a noun.

Nouns are of two kinds, common and proper.

A common nouns is the name of a sort or species of things, as man, animal, tree, river.

A proper noun is the name of an individual.

A noun signifying many is called collective noun, or noun of multitude, as the people, nation, army.

The distinction between a common noun and proper noun is very obvious.

Nouns which denote the genus, species, or variety of beings or things, are always common.

The word Earth, when it signifies a kind or quantity of dirt, it is common noun; but when it denotes the planet we inhibit, it is a proper noun. In English also the Earth is feminine noun. Moon, Sun, city, country, boat, nature,  is also feminine in English. Sun is masculine.

An abstract noun denotes a quality considered apart (that is, abstracted) from the substance or being to which it belongs; but an adjective denotes a quality jointed (adjected) to the substance or being to which it belongs.

Abstract: Not relating to concrete objects but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually.

Number is the distinction of objects, as one or more. Nouns are of two numbers, the singular and plural.

In Arabic concrete noun (إسمُ الْعَينِ) or (إسمُ الذَّاتِ) signifies the essence of something or a meaning established in and of itself; for example Fatima, a book, a scholar.

The substantive nouns are Concrete nouns and are mostly coined as the names of things like sun,

Abstract noun: If a nouns signifies the occurrence of an action or a meaning of something established in other than the noun itself. For example helping, black, Five. Masdar is an abstract nouns since it attributes a meaning to something other than itself or it signifies the occurrence of an action.  For example knowledge (ilmim) is conceptual and does not exist except as it is attributed to something else, as in Sociology "ilmul ijtamae"