namevsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#8,931
“name” frequency rank
#1,856
“né” frequency rank
10787
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature name
Definition nome particípio passado do verbo naitre

Letter map: name vs né

Shared letters muted; letters that set name and apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

4 ch
name
2 ch
né

Part-of-speech tell for name / né

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: name is anoun and averb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10787, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

name is recorded at frequency rank #8,931, classified as anoun, pronounced /neɪm/. is at rank #1,856, tagged as averb.

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 10787, this pair ranks #62,231 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of name vs né

Shared letters: n. Private to "name": aem. Private to "né": é.

"name" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "né" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • nameanme · naem · namme · nmae · nname

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "name" and "né" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "name" is a noun and "né" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "name" or "né" show up more?
"né" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,856 in our Portuguese list, against #8,931 for "name". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "name" and "né".

  • Full dictionary entry for "name" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "né" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,231 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "name" and "né" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nadie vs name". 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 #62,231 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list