Lyon

/\li.jɔ̃\/ name

Letters

4 characters

Frequency Rank

#1,004

in French word usage

Misspellings

6

tracked variants

Confusables

20

similar word pairs

Lyon is aFrenchname. It means: Commune, ville et chef-lieu de département français, située dans la métropole de Lyon (69M), en région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, autrefois située dans le département du Rhône. Pronounced \li.jɔ̃\. It ranks #1,004 in French word frequency. Often confused with lys and lyre.

Key facts for Lyon
PropertyValue
HeadwordLyon
LanguageFrench
Part of speechName
IPA\li.jɔ̃\
Letters4
Frequency rank#1,004
Misspellings tracked6
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

Position of Lyon in French word frequency (lower rank = more common)

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for Lyon is 4 letters long, classified as aname, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \li.jɔ̃\. Corpus data places it at rank #1,004 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Commune, ville et chef-lieu de département français, située dans la métropole de Lyon (69M), en région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, autrefois située dans le département du Rhône.".

Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for Lyon, with forms such as "llyon", "loyn", and "lyno". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "lys", "lyre", "Lyons", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is Lyon, spelled L-Y-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Commune, ville et chef-lieu de département français, située dans la métropole de Lyon (69M), en région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, autrefois située dans le département du Rhône.

Synonyms

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: llyon,loyn,lyno,lyonn,lyyon,ylon

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

Relative frequency of common misspelling types for Lyon

Misspelling Variants of "Lyon"

llyon5loyn4lyno4lyonn5lyyon5ylon4
Misspelling Variants of "Lyon"

Frequency rank: #1,004 in French

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "Lyon"?
"Lyon" is spelled L-Y-O-N. The IPA pronunciation is \li.jɔ̃\.
What does "Lyon" mean?
As a name, "Lyon" means: Commune, ville et chef-lieu de département français, située dans la métropole de Lyon (69M), en région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, autrefois située dans le département du Rhône.
What words are commonly confused with "Lyon"?
"Lyon" is commonly confused with "lys", "lyre", "Lyons". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "Lyon"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "Lyon" is \li.jɔ̃\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "Lyon" come from?
"Lyon" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter L in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.