MauricevsMeuriceConfusable pair

Which to use

“Maurice” and “Meurice” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#3,411
“Maurice” frequency rank
#43,554
“Meurice” frequency rank
46965
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Maurice Meurice
Definition Nom de famille. Nom de famille.

Where the eye mixes Maurice and Meurice

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. Maurice and Meurice follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
Maurice
7 ch
Meurice

Look-alike desk: Maurice vs Meurice

A purely visual mix-up. Maurice (\mɔ.ʁis\) and Meurice (\mø.ʁis\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - a in “Maurice” becomes e in “Meurice”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46965, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Maurice is recorded at frequency rank #3,411, classified as aname, pronounced \mɔ.ʁis\. Meurice is at rank #43,554, tagged as aname, pronounced \mø.ʁis\.

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 46965, this pair ranks #190,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Maurice vs Meurice

Shared letters: ceimru. Private to "Maurice": a. Private to "Meurice": -.

"Maurice" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV  ·  "Meurice" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Mauriceamurice · maruice · mauirce · maurcie · mauricce · mauriec · maurrice · mmaurice
  • Meuriceemurice · meruice · meuirce · meurcie · meuricce · meuriec · meurrice · mmeurice

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Maurice" for "Meurice" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\mɔ.ʁis\ versus \mø.ʁis\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "Maurice" vs "Meurice" - which ranks higher?
"Maurice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,411 in our French list, against #43,554 for "Meurice". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "Maurice" and "Meurice" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Maurice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Meurice" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #190,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Maurice" and "Meurice" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Mauricie vs Meurice". 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 #190,652 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