Clair

loc · Latin script

Meaning: Voir Petitclerc

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Clair is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia
  • USUnited States
  • CACanada

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
413 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Voir Petitclerc.

Sources 1

  • Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Clair counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Clair is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—4.6KClair413
AU Australia—3Clair128
CA Canada—9Clair125
GB United Kingdom—3Clair214
NZ New Zealand——Clair51
FR France—835Clair5
BR Brazil—15K—5

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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); the ca-statcan-baby-names register; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Clair is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Panama, Brazil, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Claír, Ćlãīr, ́clair

70 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Clair 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, director; pers. name, French

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Rene, French film writer and

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In French, Du latin clarus, « clair, limpide, brillant ». Fête: 11 août (sainte Claire) pour la forme féminine apparentée.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In French, Du latin clarus, « clair, illustre ».

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In French, Latin clarus « clear, bright ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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)

1850190019502000Wesley Clair Mitchell, b. 1874Clair Maxwell, b. 1890René Clair, b. 1898Clair Engle, b. 1911Clair Cameron Patterson, b. 1922Philippe Clair, b. 1930Dick Clair, b. 1931Jean Clair, b. 1940Cyrielle Clair, b. 1955Clair Norris, b. 1997

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 67 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Clair
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—15K#1,657
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202213K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—9.6K#1,386
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.6K#7,292
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.5K#6,858
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.4K#7,342
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.9K#3,028
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—3.8K#1,386
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.4K#3,028
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)1962835#690
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991504—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202529—

Reference works 4

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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

What does the name Clair mean, and where does it come from?
Voir Petitclerc. Recorded by Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition.
In which country does Clair have the most bearers?
Clair is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled clair.

What do you want to know about Clair?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/clair

The 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, “Clair”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Clair parses inside a full name →