English homophones
hoo/Hu/who
"hoo" is a pronoun; "Hu" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "hoo" arrives as a pronoun, while "Hu" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "hoo" is 3 letters, "Hu" is 2; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "hoo" is 3 letters, "who" is 3; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "Hu" is 2 letters, "who" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across hoo, Hu, who: h. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
hoo
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory ho · private o
Hu
2 letters · 1 vowels · shape CV
Inventory hu · private u
who
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCV
Inventory how · private ow
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "hoo" when you mean: she
- Write "Hu" when you mean: A common surname from Chinese of east Asian derivation.
- Write "who" when you mean: What person or people; which person or people; asks for the identity of someone; used in a direct or indirect question.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (hoo, Hu, who). Here's where to go from here.
- "who" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #53 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: hey · hay · haye. 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.