OnsvsourTell them apart

Quick tell: Ons is a name, our is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Ons” is a name and “our” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,770
“Ons” frequency rank
#76
“our” frequency rank
13846
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Ons our
Definition A female given name from Arabic. Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our).

Letter map: Ons vs our

Shared letters muted; letters that set Ons and our apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
Ons
3 ch
our

Grammar separator: Ons vs our

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Ons is aname and ouradeterminer. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13846, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Ons is recorded at frequency rank #13,770, classified as aname. our is at rank #76, tagged as adet, pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/.

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 13846, this pair ranks #473,527 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Ons vs our

Shared letters: o. Private to "Ons": ns. Private to "our": ru.

"Ons" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "our" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Ons" and "our" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Ons" is a name and "our" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Ons" or "our" show up more?
"our" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #76 in our English list, against #13,770 for "Ons". 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 "Ons" and "our". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Ons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "our" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #473,527 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Ons" and "our" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "omi vs Ons". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #473,527 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