Lucy vs lui, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“Lucy” is a name and “lui” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,533
“Lucy” frequency rank: #68
“lui” frequency rank: 10601
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Lucy	lui
Definition	Commune française, située dans le département de la Moselle.	Pronom clitique de la troisième personne du singulier épicène du complément d’objet indirect.

Letter map: Lucy vs lui

Shared letters muted; letters that set Lucy and lui apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

Lucy

3 ch

lui

Role in the sentence - Lucy and lui

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Lucy is aname and luiapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10601, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Lucy is recorded at frequency rank #10,533, classified as aname. lui is at rank #68, tagged as apron, pronounced \lɥi\.

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 10601, this pair ranks #412,359 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Lucy vs lui

Shared letters: lu. Private to "Lucy": cy. Private to "lui": i.

"Lucy" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "lui" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

Lucy ← lcuy · llucy · luccy · lucyy · luyc · ulcy

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Lucy" and "lui" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Lucy" is a name and "lui" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary French text, does "Lucy" or "lui" show up more?

"lui" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #68 in our French list, against #10,533 for "Lucy". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "Lucy" and "lui". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "Lucy" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lui" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #412,359 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Lucy" and "lui" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Lucy vs lure". 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 #412,359 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.