I can understand why Monday is an abstract noun (it isn't something we can perceive with any of our 5 senses),
But is Monday considered a proper noun or a common noun?
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2 Answers
Monday is considered to be a proper noun (in English the capitalization is a dead giveaway):
A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity (such as London, Jupiter, John Hunter, or Toyota), as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities (or nonunique instance[s] of that class)—for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
Which nouns are considered proper names depends on language. For example, names of days and months are considered proper names in English, but not in Spanish, French, Swedish or Finnish, where they are not capitalized.
Monday is a unique entity (representing the second day of the week), whereas the corresponding common noun, day, represents any day of the week.
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what I don't understand is how unique is Monday when there are so many Mondays around?– PacerierCommented Sep 28, 2011 at 18:13
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5Monday is unique in context of the week, not in context of the history of the universe.– DanielCommented Sep 28, 2011 at 18:18
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5There are a lot of Johns and Ellens, too, and those are proper names.– RobustoCommented Nov 7, 2014 at 21:14
I agree with Pacerier. A Monday is just a day that falls in certain order on a sequence. You could think the abstract concept of Monday, whatever that might be, is unique but people don't think of Monday that way. It is just a day on a sequence of days. And there are many of those days. It seems to me that we capitalize Monday because that is the practice and it does not really fit the rule.
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1Welcome to EL&U. This is not a discussion forum, but a Q&A site, so to support an existing answer, you would use the voting buttons to the left of the post. For guidance on how to use this site, I encourage you to take the site tour and visit the help center for guidance.– chosterCommented Nov 7, 2014 at 21:10