kovsKobeTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#9,864
“ko” frequency rank
#28,224
“Kobe” frequency rank
38088
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ko Kobe
Definition Configuration cyclique de pions, si fréquente que des règles spécifiques la traitent. Nom de famille.

Letter map: ko vs Kobe

Shared letters muted; letters that set ko and Kobe apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
ko
4 ch
Kobe

Grammar separator: ko vs Kobe

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ko is anoun and Kobeaname. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ko” sits inside “Kobe”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38088, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ko is recorded at frequency rank #9,864, classified as anoun, pronounced \ko\. Kobe is at rank #28,224, 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 38088, this pair ranks #257,752 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ko vs Kobe

Shared letters: ko. Private to "ko": -. Private to "Kobe": be.

"ko" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "Kobe" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Kobekboe · kkobe · kobbe · koeb · okbe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ko" and "Kobe" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ko" is a noun and "Kobe" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ko" or "Kobe" show up more?
"ko" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,864 in our French list, against #28,224 for "Kobe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "ko" vs "Kobe" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ko" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Kobe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #257,752 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ko" and "Kobe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Kobe vs kom". 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 #257,752 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