clairevsClareWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: claire is a noun, Clare is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“claire” is a noun and “Clare” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,986
“claire” frequency rank
#30,527
“Clare” frequency rank
32513
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature claire Clare
Definition Les cendres lavées ou les os calcinés dont on se sert pour faire les coupelles dans l’affinage. Bourgade située dans le district de St Edmundsbury, dans le Suffolk, en Angleterre.

Letter map: claire vs Clare

Shared letters muted; letters that set claire and Clare apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. claire runs 6 letters (CCVVCV) against Clare's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
claire
5 ch
Clare

Grammar separator: claire vs Clare

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: claire is anoun and Clareaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32513, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

claire is recorded at frequency rank #1,986, classified as anoun, pronounced \klɛʁ\. Clare is at rank #30,527, tagged as aname.

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 32513, this pair ranks #296,774 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of claire vs Clare

Shared letters: acelr. Private to "claire": i. Private to "Clare": -.

"claire" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV  ·  "Clare" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • claire ← calire · cclaire · claier · clairre · clarie · cliare · cllaire · lcaire
  • Clare ← cclare · clarre · cllare · clrae · lcare

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "claire" and "Clare" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "claire" is a noun and "Clare" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "claire" vs "Clare" - which ranks higher?
"claire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,986 in our French list, against #30,527 for "Clare". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "claire" and "Clare".

  • Full dictionary entry for "claire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Clare" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #296,774 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "claire" and "Clare" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Clare vs clavel". 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 #296,774 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