ABSTRACT
70 PARTS OF SPEECH always been such (e.g. Rasselas), most of them have originated, totally or partially, in common names specialized. Is" the Union" as applied to one particular students' union at Oxford or Cambridge a proper name 1 Or the "British Academy" or the "Royal Insurance Company," or-from another sphere--" Men and Women" or "Outspoken Essays" or "Essays and Reviews" as book-titles ~ The more arbitrary the name is, the more inclined we are to recognize it at once as a proper name, but it is no indispensable condition. The Dover road (meaning 'the road that leads to Dover ') is not originally a proper name, while Dover Street which has no connexion with Dover and might just as well have been baptized Lincoln Street, is a proper name from the first. But the Dover Road may in course of time become a proper name, if the original reason for the name is forgotten and the road has become an ordinary street; and the transition may to some extent be marked linguistically by the dropping of the definite article. One of the London parks is still by many called" the Green Park," but others omit the article, and then Green Park is frankly a proper name; compare also Oentral Park in New York, New College, Newcastle. Thus, the absence of the article in English (though not in Italian or German) becomes one of the exterior marks by which we may know proper from common names.
