English homophones
gun/Gunn
"gun" is a noun; "Gunn" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "gun" arrives as a noun, while "Gunn" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "gun" then splits - "gun" (3 letters) vs "Gunn" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across gun, Gunn: gnu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
gun
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory gnu · no private letters vs siblings
Gunn
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory gnu · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "gun" when you mean: A device for shooting projectiles or ditto (a shooter), functioning through stored energy: a firearm, cannon, harpoon gun/spear gun, rayg…
- Write "Gunn" when you mean: A Scottish surname from Old Norse.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- Gunn ← ggunn · gnun · ugnn
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (gun, Gunn). Here's where to go from here.
- "gun" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,168 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: graham · Graeme. Nearby cluster
- Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.