Hu
/hu/
"hu" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Hu” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #13,362) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #13,362
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A common surname from Chinese of east Asian derivation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hu · Hu · English
Hu · rank #13,362 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #13,362
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH hunted
Nearest frequency peer: hunted (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “Hu”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- glacier
glacier
86,643 corpus weight
- GS
GS
86,641 corpus weight
- Hu
Hu
86,639 corpus weight
- hunted
hunted
86,638 corpus weight
- implying
implying
86,636 corpus weight
- improper
improper
86,635 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “Hu” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Hu |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | /hu/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #13,362 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “Hu”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for Hu is neighbouring look-alikes ("hv", "huh", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced /hu/. Frequency #13,362 among 2,646 “H” headwords. Gloss: "A common surname from Chinese of east Asian derivation.".
No misspelling variants are generated for Hu in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hv", "huh", "hug", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Chinese 胡 (hú). Doublet of Wu. For less common variants, see Hu. The correct English form is Hu, spelled H-U.
Definition
- 1A common surname from Chinese of east Asian derivation.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how Hu appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
At the center of it all was Hu Shuo-Chieh, a decorated Taiwanese superstar who soon followed up his standout moment (his team would fall short in the finals) with an even more surprising move. In November, Mr. Hu, known in gaming as SwordArt, announced that he was leaving his base in China, […]
Etymology
From Chinese 胡 (hú). Doublet of Wu. For less common variants, see Hu.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.