PauvstheirWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: Pau is a name, their is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Pau” is a name and “their” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,946
“Pau” frequency rank
#11,131
“their” frequency rank
61077
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Pau their
Definition Stadt in Südfrankreich ihr

Letter map: Pau vs their

Shared letters muted; letters that set Pau and their apart highlighted. No shared letter run. Pau runs 3 letters (CVV) against their's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
Pau
5 ch
their

Role in the sentence - Pau and their

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Pau is aname and theirapronoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61077, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Pau is recorded at frequency rank #49,946, classified as aname, pronounced […]. their is at rank #11,131, tagged as apron, 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 61077, this pair ranks #763,145 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Pau vs their

Shared letters: none. Private to "Pau": apu. Private to "their": ehirt.

"Pau" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "their" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • their ← hteir · tehir · theirr · theri · thheir · thier · ttheir

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Pau" and "their" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Pau" is a name and "their" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Pau" or "their" show up more?
"their" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,131 in our German list, against #49,946 for "Pau". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Pau" vs "their" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Pau" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "their" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #763,145 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Pau" and "their" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Pau 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 #763,145 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