BahamavsBahamasWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Bahama is a noun, Bahamas is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Bahama” is a noun and “Bahamas” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,517
“Bahama” frequency rank
#14,276
“Bahamas” frequency rank
57793
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Bahama Bahamas
Definition Any of the islands that constitute the Bahamas. An archipelago and country in the Caribbean. Official name: Commonwealth of The Bahamas.

Letter map: Bahama vs Bahamas

Shared letters muted; letters that set Bahama and Bahamas apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. Bahama runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against Bahamas's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
Bahama
7 ch
Bahamas

Part-of-speech tell for Bahama / Bahamas

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Bahama is anoun and Bahamasaname. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “Bahama” sits inside “Bahamas”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57793, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Bahama is recorded at frequency rank #43,517, classified as anoun. Bahamas is at rank #14,276, tagged as aname, pronounced /bəˈhɑː.məz/.

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 57793, this pair ranks #116,912 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Bahama vs Bahamas

Shared letters: abhm. Private to "Bahama": -. Private to "Bahamas": s.

"Bahama" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "Bahamas" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Bahama ← abhama · baahma · bahaam · bahamma · bahhama · bahmaa · bbahama · bhaama
  • Bahamas ← abhamas · baahmas · bahaams · bahamass · bahammas · bahamsa · bahhamas · bahmaas

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Bahama" and "Bahamas" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Bahama" is a noun and "Bahamas" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Bahama" or "Bahamas" show up more?
"Bahamas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,276 in our English list, against #43,517 for "Bahama". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Bahama" and "Bahamas".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Bahama" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Bahamas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #116,912 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Bahama" and "Bahamas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Bahama vs Bahamian". 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 #116,912 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list