BarkervsbarréeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Barker is a name, barrée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Barker” is a name and “barrée” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,889
“Barker” frequency rank
#25,217
“barrée” frequency rank
60106
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Barker barrée
Definition Nom de famille. Féminin singulier de barré.

Letter map: Barker vs barrée

Shared letters muted; letters that set Barker and barrée apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. Barker (CVCCVC) and barrée (CVCCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
Barker
6 ch
barrée

Part-of-speech tell for Barker / barrée

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Barker is aname and barréeanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60106, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Barker is recorded at frequency rank #34,889, classified as aname. barrée is at rank #25,217, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ba.ʁe\.

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 60106, this pair ranks #99,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Barker vs barrée

Shared letters: aber. Private to "Barker": k. Private to "barrée": é.

"Barker" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "barrée" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Barker ← abrker · bakrer · barekr · barkerr · barkker · barkre · barrker · bbarker

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Barker" for "barrée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Barker" is a name and "barrée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Barker" or "barrée" show up more?
"barrée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,217 in our French list, against #34,889 for "Barker". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "Barker" and "barrée". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Barker" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "barrée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #99,425 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Barker" and "barrée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "badger vs Barker". 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 #99,425 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list