means A word that names a person, place, thing, idea, or quality.

from From Latin nomen, meaning 'name' — the same root that surfaces in 'nominate,' 'nominal,' and 'nomenclature.' Medieval grammarians spoke of the nomen substantivum (the 'substantive name') as a core part of speech, and the term traveled through Old French nom and Anglo-French noun into English in the late Middle Ages. So the noun has, fittingly, been the business of naming things from the very start.