shanvsStarWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#36,590
“shan” frequency rank
#1,640
“Star” frequency rank
38230
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature shan Star
Definition Langue de la famille tai-kadai parlée en Birmanie, en Chine et en Thaïlande par les Shans. Nom de famille.

Letter map: shan vs Star

Shared letters muted; letters that set shan and Star apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
shan
4 ch
Star

Part-of-speech tell for shan / Star

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shan is anoun and Staraname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38230, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shan is recorded at frequency rank #36,590, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃan\. Star is at rank #1,640, 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 38230, this pair ranks #256,747 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of shan vs Star

Shared letters: as. Private to "shan": hn. Private to "Star": rt.

"shan" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "Star" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shanhsan · sahn · shann · shhan · shna · sshan
  • Starsatr · sstar · stra · sttar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "shan" for "Star" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "shan" is a noun and "Star" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "shan" or "Star" show up more?
"Star" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,640 in our French list, against #36,590 for "shan". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "shan" and "Star". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "shan" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Star" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #256,747 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "shan" and "Star" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shan vs swag". 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 #256,747 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