Which to use
“Person” is a name and “personne” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #22,029
- “Person” frequency rank
- #149
- “personne” frequency rank
- 22178
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Person | personne |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Nom de famille. | Être humain considéré en tant qu’individu. |
Where the eye mixes Person and personne
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. Person runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against personne's 8 (CVCCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: Person vs personne
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Person is \pɛʁ.sɔ̃\ while personne is \pɛʁ.sɔn\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “Person” sits inside “personne”, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22178, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Person is recorded at frequency rank #22,029, classified as aname, pronounced \pɛʁ.sɔ̃\. personne is at rank #149, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛʁ.sɔn\.
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 22178, this pair ranks #359,436 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of Person vs personne
Shared letters: enoprs. Private to "Person": -. Private to "personne": -.
"Person" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "personne" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "Person" and "personne" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "Person" or "personne" show up more?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "Person" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "personne" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #359,436 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "Person" and "personne" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pernod vs Person". 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 #359,436 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.