The invention provides an ancient book proper name recognition method and device. According to the method, an ancient book text is acquired, word segmentation processing is performed on the ancient book text based on an ancient book statistical model word segmentation algorithm, and multiple proper names are obtained; each proper name is classified based on a pre-saved proper name knowledge base;for each proper name, whether the proper name is a book name in the pre-saved proper name knowledge base is judged; and if not, for each proper name, when it is judged that the proper name only belongs to one of classification categories, the proper name is saved as a target proper name of the ancient book text. Through the method, the problems that traditional manual proper name annotation consumes time and labor and traditional machine annotation has a poor effect can be relieved, the precision and quality of ancient book proper name recognition are improved, and therefore the actual application demand in ancient book sorting and publishing work is met.