JohnvsjourWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#1,203
“John” frequency rank
#141
“jour” frequency rank
1344
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature John jour
Definition Nom de famille. Période de vingt-quatre heures, commençant généralement à minuit ; en certains lieux et à certaines époques, le jour commençait plutôt avec le lever ou le coucher du soleil.

Letter map: John vs jour

Shared letters muted; letters that set John and jour apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
John
4 ch
jour

Role in the sentence - John and jour

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: John is aname and jouranoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1344, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

John is recorded at frequency rank #1,203, classified as aname. jour is at rank #141, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʒuʁ\.

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 1344, this pair ranks #438,230 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of John vs jour

Shared letters: jo. Private to "John": hn. Private to "jour": ru.

"John" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "jour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Johnjhon · jjohn · johhn · johnn · jonh · ojhn
  • jourjjour · joru · jourr · juor · ojur

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "John" for "jour" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "John" is a name and "jour" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "John" or "jour" show up more?
"jour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #141 in our French list, against #1,203 for "John". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "John" and "jour". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "John" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "jour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #438,230 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "John" and "jour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "John vs jor". 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 #438,230 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