Yes... I was thinking "The Great One" could be a title... though it's not exactly. A title is something someone else can gain, right? No one else (in our lifetimes) can ever gain the title of the Great One. I heard someone once asked to be 99 and they said no... 98 was as high as he was allowed to go.
You could counter that equally, no one in our lifetimes can gain the title "Caesar" or "the Hun" which kinda blows my logic out of the water. Let's pretend that retired titles are no longer subject to the exclusion rule of being gainable, shall we?
Now here's an interesting page:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educat … lize-words
(section marked "meaning is key")
This page suggests perhaps we don't only capitalize White House because that its name, but we might also be giving it proper noun meaning.
Consider:
a. Wow! Look! It's the Sonic Screwdriver! (wrong)
b. Wow! Look! It's the sonic screwdriver! (correct)
(Personally, I consider (a) to be the right choice if we're talking about Dr Who's screwdriver. To me, (b) is correct if the rest of the sentence is "...used by Baker on the set of the 3rd season." which establishes non-uniqueness)
And I ask you to think back to the Highlander. Ignoring the movie title which is a title and is uppercase, the person who's from there would take lowercase. "The highlander" would appear to be the correct case, no different from "the lowlander" or "the uptowner". And then the H/highlander completes his journey before the credits roll, he raises his sword in victory and yells:
I am the one!
Is "the one" a formal title (Hey guys, I'd like to introduce you to Bob the One)? I suspect no.
Is it a job title? Kind of, but lets rule that out for the sake of the children.
By all logic, "one" should be lowercase in the above sentence. Yet, I'm tempted to capitalize it (assigning it proper noun status).
We have a fair over here called "The Ex". The true name is "Canadian National Exhibition" but they call themselves "The Ex" (a name - so capitalized). Now here's the kicker. If I wrote on my fb wall "I'm going to the Exhibition" everyone reading it would automatically know I'm not going to some random museum exhibit.
Is Exhibition capitalizable because it's part of a proper name (CNE)? Lets try it with other words:
"World Poker Tour" -> "Tour" (See you next week, I'm going on the Tour)
"World Wrestling Federation" -> "Federation" (Guys, I got tickets to the Federation!)
Similarly, if I write "I'm moving West" people assume I mean Alberta rather than the other side of my city.
Aha, but what about the ozone layer? By the ephemeral "rule of one" it should be the Ozone Layer, right? I bring this up because while researching this reply, I discovered that there's no common accepted capitalization for the first moon landing. If I read "Bob thought about the Moon Landing" I suspect they mean the first one, but I'm not too sure. I would argue that moon landing is not unique enough to retain its capitalization any more. Similarly "the lunar surface" seems to trump "the Lunar surface" but I can find examples of both in scientific journals.
What about Ragnarok? It's the end of the world... or is it unique enough to be the End of the World. After all, the world can only end so many times, right? I'd argue that no, it's very hard to establish Ragnarok's uniqueness short of surviving it, which would invalidate it.
The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is often capitalized on the web, but I would suggest it shouldn't be. It's not a proper noun, even in the movie iirc. It would appear to follow my "exhibition" declaration in that it's term that when used, all the user's peers understand which object is referred to. It appears to break the concept I've built here.
How that for a non-answer?