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How would you explain these words: Corporate America, Revenue Canada, ServiceOntario, etc.?

Edit: To clarify my question, why is corporate America more popular than American corporate or American companies, Revenue Canada instead of Canada Revenue [Agency] and ServiceOntario instead of Ontario Services?

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    All of your examples are [adj][noun]. What is your question exactly?
    – user10893
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 3:16
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    What is Revenue Canada? A Google search only turns up Canada Revenue.
    – user10893
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 3:24
  • @simchona: this may be historical: The Department became known as Revenue Canada in the 1970s. In the 1990s the department became the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. In 2003 the department was split into the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness taking responsibility for the latter agency. Ref.
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 6:11
  • @Peter Thank you for finding that. I feel better knowing my Google skills are not out of practice
    – user10893
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 6:38

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I'm not sure these are terribly good examples, but in general, you can get the pattern of "noun (Y)" + "restricting/modifying noun (X)" to mean [X of Y] and to give a suggestion that other nouns of the same category as that restricting/modifying noun would also apply.

For example, a company named "Smithson America" implies that there might be other companies called "Smithson France", "Smithson Mexico" etc.

In any case, I probably wouldn't analyse either of the words as an adjective.

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These are not adjectives placed after a noun. These are all proper names, and hence pure nouns.

If your question is why these entities would choose names like "Revenue Canada" rather than "Canada Revenue", it's largely because there's an implied "of" or "for" between the two words. There are also plenty of entities with names the other way, such as Canada Post and New York Life.

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  • Corporate America isn't adj+noun?
    – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 12:48
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    Corporate America is, but that's a perfectly normal adjective modifying a noun. There's no mystery there, it's just like "blue sky".
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 13:05
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I can't comment on "Revenue Canada" or "ServiceOntario", but "corporate America" definitely follows the adj+noun format.

In this case, the noun is "America", and "corporate" is an adjective that refers to a subset of that noun. It is used in the same manner as "rural America." "Corporate America" is different from "American companies" in that "American companies" refers to all companies in America, including mining, agri-business, manufacturing, and consumer sales, whereas "corporate America" is almost always limited to the stereotypic cubicle-dwelling office workers employed in the headquarters of large corporations.

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