persvsPiersTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#36,278
“pers” frequency rank
#14,809
“Piers” frequency rank
51087
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pers Piers
Definition That which belongs to per, theirs (singular): possessive case of per, used in place of a noun. A male given name from Ancient Greek.

Letter map: pers vs Piers

Shared letters muted; letters that set pers and Piers apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. pers runs 4 letters (CVCC) against Piers's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
pers
5 ch
Piers

Role in the sentence - pers and Piers

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pers is apronoun and Piersaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51087, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pers is recorded at frequency rank #36,278, classified as apron. Piers is at rank #14,809, tagged as aname, pronounced /pɪəz/.

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 51087, this pair ranks #168,510 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pers vs Piers

Shared letters: eprs. Private to "pers": -. Private to "Piers": i.

"pers" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Piers" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pers ← eprs · perrs · pesr · ppers
  • Piers ← ipers · peirs · pierrs · pierss · piesr · pires · ppiers

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pers" for "Piers" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pers" is a pronoun and "Piers" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "pers" or "Piers" show up more?
"Piers" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,809 in our English list, against #36,278 for "pers". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "pers" vs "Piers" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pers" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Piers" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #168,510 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pers" and "Piers" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pecs vs pers". 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 #168,510 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