IrinavsironWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#21,366
“Irina” frequency rank
#13,412
“iron” frequency rank
34778
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Irina iron
Definition Prénom féminin, correspondant à Irène. De fer, en fer.

Letter map: Irina vs iron

Shared letters muted; letters that set Irina and iron apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Irina runs 5 letters (VCVCV) against iron's 4 (VCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
Irina
4 ch
iron

Part-of-speech tell for Irina / iron

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Irina is aname and ironanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34778, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Irina is recorded at frequency rank #21,366, classified as aname. iron is at rank #13,412, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ˈaɪ.ɚn\.

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 34778, this pair ranks #281,448 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Irina vs iron

Shared letters: inr. Private to "Irina": a. Private to "iron": o.

"Irina" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "iron" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Irina ← iirna · irian · irinna · irnia · irrina · riina
  • iron ← iorn · irno · ironn · irron · rion

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Irina" for "iron" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Irina" is a name and "iron" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Irina" or "iron"?
"iron" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,412 in our French list, against #21,366 for "Irina". 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 "Irina" and "iron". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Irina" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "iron" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #281,448 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Irina" and "iron" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Ilona vs Irina". 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 #281,448 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