HelvshimWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#30,823
“Hel” frequency rank
#82
“him” frequency rank
30905
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Hel him
Definition The goddess of the realm of the unheroic dead, a daughter of Loki by the jotun Angrboða. A masculine pronoun; he as a grammatical object.

Letter map: Hel vs him

Shared letters muted; letters that set Hel and him apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
Hel
3 ch
him

Role in the sentence - Hel and him

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Hel is aname and himapronoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30905, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Hel is recorded at frequency rank #30,823, classified as aname. him is at rank #82, tagged as apron, pronounced /ˈhɪm/.

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 30905, this pair ranks #350,624 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Hel vs him

Shared letters: h. Private to "Hel": el. Private to "him": im.

"Hel" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "him" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Hel" for "him" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Hel" is a name and "him" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Hel" or "him"?
"him" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #82 in our English list, against #30,823 for "Hel". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "Hel" and "him". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Hel" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "him" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #350,624 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Hel" and "him" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Hel vs HRW". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #350,624 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