Clive
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Person who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/klaɪv/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Clive is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. In Guyana it is the 73rd most common given name.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.5K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 390 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Clive, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Clive counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #306 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 3 | Clive | 300 |
| ZA South Africa | #309 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Clive | 118 |
| US United States | — | 4,541 | 1 in 73K | 4.5K | Clive | 390 |
| AU Australia | #674 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | 3 | Clive | 187 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 1 | Clive | 146 |
| NZ New Zealand | #374 | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 13 | Clive | 110 |
| JM Jamaica | #121 | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Clive | 18 |
| GY Guyana | #73 | 516 | 1 in 1.5K | 516 | Clive | 6 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Clive is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Variant of English cliff; used in Ireland from the English surname and Robert Clive’s fame.
as a nameIrish first names
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of the various places (in e.g. Cheshire, Shropshire) so called from Old English clif ‘cliff’, ‘slope’. As a given name it seems to have been originally chosen in honour of ‘Clive of India’ (Robert Clive, created
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
A variant of the English word cliff. It originally appeared as an English placename, first recorded in 1327, then as a surname. The popularity of the English statesman and founder of the British Empire in India, Robert Clive (1725-74), led to its use as a first name in England. It has spread to Ireland where it is now occasionally used.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, A topographic surname from Old English - someone who lived near a cliff (Old English clif).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from the cliff
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- C. S. Lewisb. 1898GBnot in their usual nameBritish writer, lay theologian, and scholar (1898–1963)
- Clive Dunnb. 1920GBBritish actor (1920–2012)
- Clive Donnerb. 1926GBBritish film director (1926–2010)
- Clive Revillb. 1930NZNew Zealand actor (1930–2025)
- Clive Grangerb. 1934GBBritish economist
- Clive Swiftb. 1936GBBritish actor (1936–2019)
- Clive Merrisonb. 1945GBWelsh actor
- Clive Russellb. 1945GBScottish actor
- Clive Barkerb. 1952GBEnglish author, film director, and visual artist (born 1952)
- Clive Owenb. 1964GBEnglish actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 65 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.5K | #4,200 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 516 | #177 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 57 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13 | #4,200 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1974 | 13 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 11 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2013 | 3 | #687 |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 1979 | 3 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2015 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2015 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2018 | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Clive a male or female name?
- Clive is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Clive mean, and where does it come from?
- Person who lives by a slope, riverbank or cliff. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Clive?
- A machine transcription gives /klaɪv/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Clive have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Clive in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled clive.
- Where is Clive most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Clive is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Clive?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,541 people named Clive in 2020, about 1 in 73 thousand residents.
- How common is Clive compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Clive is the 306th most common given name of 404,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Clive?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cliveThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Clive” — the 306th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.