BasilvsiiWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Basil is a name, ii is an unknown, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Basil” is a name and “ii” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,992
“Basil” frequency rank
#520
“ii” frequency rank
34512
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Basil ii
Definition männlicher Vorname Nominativ Plural Maskulinum des Pronomens is

Letter map: Basil vs ii

Shared letters muted; letters that set Basil and ii apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

5 ch
Basil
2 ch
ii

Part-of-speech tell for Basil / ii

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Basil is aname and iianunknown. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34512, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Basil is recorded at frequency rank #33,992, classified as aname, pronounced […]. ii is at rank #520, tagged as anunknown, pronounced […].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 34512, this pair ranks #1,661,681 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Basil vs ii

Shared letters: i. Private to "Basil": abls. Private to "ii": -.

"Basil" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "ii" · 2 letters · shape VV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Basilabsil · baisl · basill · basli · bassil · bbasil · bsail

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Basil" for "ii" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Basil" is a name and "ii" an unknown, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Basil" or "ii"?
"ii" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #520 in our German list, against #33,992 for "Basil". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "Basil" and "ii". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Basil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ii" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,661,681 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Basil" and "ii" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Basil vs puzzles". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,661,681 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list