HergévsHorneConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#27,091
“Hergé” frequency rank
#43,975
“Horne” frequency rank
71066
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Hergé Horne
Definition Nom de plume de Georges Remi, notamment auteur des Aventures de Tintin. Variante du datif singulier de Horn.

Where the eye mixes Hergé and Horne

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. Hergé and Horne follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
Hergé
5 ch
Horne

Look-alike desk: Hergé vs Horne

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Hergé is \ɛʁ.ʒe\ while Horne is \ˈhɔʁnə\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71066, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Hergé is recorded at frequency rank #27,091, classified as aname, pronounced \ɛʁ.ʒe\. Horne is at rank #43,975, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈhɔʁnə\.

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 71066, this pair ranks #48,933 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Hergé vs Horne

Shared letters: ehr. Private to "Hergé": gé. Private to "Horne": no.

"Hergé" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "Horne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Horne ← hhorne · honre · horen · hornne · horrne · hrone · ohrne

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Hergé" for "Horne" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Hergé" is a name and "Horne" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Hergé" vs "Horne" - which ranks higher?
"Hergé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,091 in our French list, against #43,975 for "Horne". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "Hergé" and "Horne" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Hergé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Horne" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,933 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Hergé" and "Horne" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Horne vs hornet". 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 #48,933 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