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Do names (e.g., proper nouns), when used as attributes for their referred objects, have the same stylistic constraints of use as other cases of attributive nouns? Specifically, the examples 5-8 are different to the examples 1-4 in this respect (I made up all the examples to illustrate my question). Is my intuition correct that their attributive variants are stylistically inferior or is this feeling wrong? I could not find this special case addressed in any rules or recommendations out there.

Examples with regular nouns:

  1. the city center vs. the center of the city
  2. the night vision vs. the vision at night

Examples with names and objects other than those the names refer to:

  1. The London weather vs. the weather in London
  2. The KFC recipes vs. the recipes of KFC

Examples with names as attributive nouns with their referred objects:

  1. The London city vs. the city of London
  2. The KFC restaurant chain vs. the restaurant chain KFC
  3. The Apple company vs. the company Apple
  4. The "sum" variable vs. the variable "sum"
tchrist
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l.inc
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    What examples are you citing? Please attribute your sources, or if they are your own examples instead of from a textbook or homework, say so. – livresque Dec 30 '22 at 03:11
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    I don't quite understand what you're asking, but we wouldn't use an article with night vision, or refer to the London city - and the City of London is a particular district. – Kate Bunting Dec 30 '22 at 08:42
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    There are a lot of different things going on here. Something like "Boston city" might be used to distinguish the city limits from the wider metro area, but the City of London has a distinct meaning from London. "Apple C/company" could be the name of a corporation; cf "the Big Mac company". "sum" in quotes could be a variable name or some other way of referring to a variable (e.g. a descriptive tag), and there are often style guides specifying how to refer to variables. You might want to specify exactly what you mean, or narrow down the question to places, corporations, or some other subgroup. – Stuart F Dec 30 '22 at 11:27
  • 'The city of Oxford' is a lengthier version of 'Oxford'. However, 'Oxford City' is the local football team, 'Oxford City F.C.', at present playing in the 'National League South'. (And forcing me to double-punctuate, ".',".) Though there are broad generalisations, one has to be aware of many idiosyncratic usages / preferences. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 30 '22 at 19:47
  • Thanks to all who tried to help. I think, the main misunderstanding about my question is whether the variants in the examples refer to the same entity. And yes, I tried to come up with the variants that refer to the same entity. Sorry for the misguidance with "the city of London". That is, when someone tries to refer to the company Apple, both variants seem applicable but my intuition tells me that "the company Apple" is better than "the Apple company". Same goes for the variable "sum". Both variants are meant to refer to the variable, whose name is "sum". – l.inc Dec 31 '22 at 00:50
  • P.S. I often participate in reviews of technical documentation. Very often do my colleagues choose the attributive form (such as, the "sum" variable), which seems less appealing to me but I don't have the theoretical basis for an argument. That's where the question comes from. – l.inc Dec 31 '22 at 00:56
  • You need more context for you "sum" example. In this example, the x variable is correct: We will label the horizontal axis the x axis and will display the x variable on that axis. – Tinfoil Hat Dec 31 '22 at 17:37
  • @TinfoilHat, thanks for the example. To take it as a basis, wouldn't it be better style to word the sentence as We will label the horizontal axis the x axis and will display the variable x on that axis. Note that I never meant to call the original variant wrong. It just seems to me less preferable. Is this intuition wrong? – l.inc Jan 01 '23 at 00:54
  • Well, no — that's what I was saying; the x variable sounds better to me here. We'll display the x variable on the x axis... vs. The variable x is used to label the horizontal axis... – Tinfoil Hat Jan 01 '23 at 01:00
  • @TinfoilHat what exactly in the context makes one variant better than the other? I could follow why "x axis" is nearly always preferable over "axis x". My guess is that "x axis" as a whole idiomatically designates a specific well-known entity, while "axis x" would rather suggest a context, in which the author previously introduced it as one of potentially many: Let there be an axis, and let us call it x. – l.inc Jan 01 '23 at 01:17
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    You might want to write another question that focuses on just one example (such as the one we're discussing here). It's hard to think in this little spot. – Tinfoil Hat Jan 01 '23 at 16:17

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