happy birthday

intj

The verdict

“happy birthday” is outside the top-ranked German vocabulary, used as an interjection - the kind of word writers most often double-check.

Unranked
below top-frequency German
14
letters

Dominant Wiktionary sense: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Key facts for happy birthday
PropertyValue
Headwordhappy birthday
LanguageGerman
Part of speechInterjection
Letters14
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “happy birthday” sits in German frequency

happy birthday falls outside the top-100,000 ranked German words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The German entry for happy birthday is 14 letters long, classified as an interjection. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!".

No misspelling variants are generated for happy birthday in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable German patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct German form is happy birthday, spelled H-A-P-P-Y- -B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Cite this page

Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:

PlainSpell, “happy birthday, German word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/de/wort/happy-birthday

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "happy birthday"?
"happy birthday" is spelled H-A-P-P-Y- -B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y.
What does "happy birthday" mean?
As an interjection, "happy birthday" means: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!
What language does "happy birthday" come from?
"happy birthday" is a German word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Using “happy birthday”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct German spelling is H-A-P-P-Y- -B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words

Nearby German words

Other entries that begin with the letter H in our German index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list FrequencyWords open word-frequency list