Ottawa
\ɔ.ta.wa\
The verdict
“Ottawa” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #5,482 in French word frequency and used as a proper noun.
- #5,482
- frequency rank, French
- 6
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Nom de famille.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Ottawa |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | \ɔ.ta.wa\ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #5,482 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Ottawa” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for Ottawa is 6 letters long, classified as a proper noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \ɔ.ta.wa\. Corpus data places it at rank #5,482 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Nom de famille.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for Ottawa, with forms such as "otatwa", "otawa", and "ottaaw". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is Ottawa, spelled O-T-T-A-W-A.
Definition
- 1Nom de famille.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: otatwa,otawa,ottaaw,ottawwa,ottwaa,totawa
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of Ottawa - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “Ottawa”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is O-T-T-A-W-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \ɔ.ta.wa\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
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.