Have capitalization rules changed over time? IIRC, German capitalizes most nouns, and German was very nearly chosen for America's national language. Further, reading a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, one can see that Rights, Happiness, and other important words were capitalized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_declaration_independenc...

> German was very nearly chosen for America's national language

Snopes to the rescue once again: http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp

Yes, in English many nouns used to be capitalized but are not today.

(And speaking of capitalization, I can't beleive Deletionpedia has a whole page about whether "Internet" should be capitalized or not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_capitalization_convent... )

We still do this in English; consider "Free software" versus "free software". The first means "libre", the second means "zero cost".

It's not an issue of importance but of making a generic word into one with specific meaning.

It seems to me that this still falls under the current rule of capitalizing proper nouns, though in this instance the nouns are made proper for exactly the reason you stated.

Article that touches on some of this: http://www.slate.com/id/2273197/