O'Donovan
"o-donovan" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“O'Donovan” is uncommon English (frequency #71,750 among 15,494 “O” headwords), classed as a proper noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #71,750
- frequency rank, English
- 15,494
- “O” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A surname from Irish.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | O'Donovan |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Frequency rank | #71,750 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “O'Donovan” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
O'Donovan is uncommon English at frequency #71,750 among 15,494 “O” headwords, classed as aproper noun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A surname from Irish.".
Zero misspellings are on record for O'Donovan in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Irish Ó Dunnabháin. The correct English form is O'Donovan, spelled O-'-D-O-N-O-V-A-N.
Definition
- 1A surname from Irish.
Etymology
From Irish Ó Dunnabháin.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “O'Donovan”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-'-D-O-N-O-V-A-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.