MaillyvsmailsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#30,258
“Mailly” frequency rank
#7,725
“mails” frequency rank
37983
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Mailly mails
Definition Nom de famille. Pluriel de mail.

Letter map: Mailly vs mails

Shared letters muted; letters that set Mailly and mails apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
Mailly
5 ch
mails

Grammar separator: Mailly vs mails

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Mailly is aname and mailsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37983, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Mailly is recorded at frequency rank #30,258, classified as aname. mails is at rank #7,725, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maj\.

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 37983, this pair ranks #258,558 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Mailly vs mails

Shared letters: ailm. Private to "Mailly": y. Private to "mails": s.

"Mailly" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "mails" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Maillyamilly · maillyy · maily · mailyl · malily · mially · mmailly
  • mailsamils · maills · mailss · maisl · malis · mials · mmails

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Mailly" for "mails" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Mailly" is a name and "mails" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Mailly" or "mails"?
"mails" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,725 in our French list, against #30,258 for "Mailly". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "Mailly" vs "mails" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Mailly" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mails" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #258,558 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Mailly" and "mails" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Mailly vs Milla". 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 #258,558 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