shahvsShawWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#26,537
“shah” frequency rank
#14,152
“Shaw” frequency rank
40689
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature shah Shaw
Definition Variante orthographique de chah. Nom de famille.

Letter map: shah vs Shaw

Shared letters muted; letters that set shah and Shaw apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. shah and Shaw follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
shah
4 ch
Shaw

Part-of-speech tell for shah / Shaw

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shah is anoun and Shawaname. On the page they differ by a single letter - h in “shah” becomes w in “Shaw”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40689, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shah is recorded at frequency rank #26,537, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃa\. Shaw is at rank #14,152, 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 40689, this pair ranks #238,664 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of shah vs Shaw

Shared letters: ahs. Private to "shah": -. Private to "Shaw": w.

"shah" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "Shaw" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shah ← hsah · sahh · shahh · shha · shhah · sshah
  • Shaw ← hsaw · sahw · shaww · shhaw · shwa · sshaw

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "shah" and "Shaw" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "shah" is a noun and "Shaw" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "shah" or "Shaw"?
"Shaw" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,152 in our French list, against #26,537 for "shah". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "shah" and "Shaw". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "shah" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Shaw" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #238,664 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "shah" and "Shaw" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shah vs Sikh". 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 #238,664 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