Clare
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Clare is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Norway it is the 37th most common given name. Recorded meaning: (i) Person from Clare, Suffolk or Oxfordshire; (ii) from the female personal name Clare/Claire, from Latin Clara ‘renowned one’; (iii) worker with clay.
- KEKenya≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- FIFinland1 in 135as Kari
- NONorway1 in 246as Kari
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Clare itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #257 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 593 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100,000 named Carrie, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Kenya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Carrie in US United States, CN China, Claire in GB United Kingdom, IE Ireland, Kari in NO Norway, FI Finland and קלייר in FR France.
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)
(i) Person from Clare, Suffolk or Oxfordshire; (ii) from the female personal name Clare/Claire, from Latin Clara ‘renowned one’; (iii) worker with clay.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Clare 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Carrie | 82 |
| US United States | #133 | 163,948as Claire | 1 in 2K | 163K | Carrie | 593 |
| GB United Kingdom | #42 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 462 | 7 | Claire | 399 |
| FR France | — | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 546 | 160K | קלייר | 19 |
| FI Finland | #57 | 41,301as Kari | 1 in 135 | 57K | Kari | 68 |
| NO Norway | #37 | 22,263as Kari | 1 in 246 | 72K | Kari | 114 |
| KE Kenya | #331 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Clare | 31 |
| IE Ireland | #49 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 767 | — | Claire | 161 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Clare 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, 1) from Fr Claire/Lat Clara ‘bright, fair’, a woman’s name; first attested Clara 1210 Cur (Hu). 2) from Clare, Suffolk; first attested Richard de Clara 1086 DB (Sf). 3) from OE clay, referring to a plasterer; first attested Simon le Clayere 1279 RH (C)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, bright famous; also name of an Irish county
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Swedish, Se Klara.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Romanian, nominative/accusative feminine/neuter plural of clar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, clearly, obviously
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Clare Boothe Luceb. 1903USAmerican writer, politician, ambassador, journalist and anti-Communist activist (1903-1987)
- Clare Hollingworthb. 1911GBBritish journalist (1911-2017)
- Clare Fischerb. 1928USAmerican keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader (1928–2012)
- Clare Higginsb. 1955GBBritish actress
- Clare Careyb. 1967USAmerican actress (born 1967)
- Clare Calbraithb. 1974GBEnglish actress
- Georgina Catesb. 1975GBnot in their usual nameactress
- Clare Grantb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Clare Bowenb. 1984AUAustralian actress and singer
- Clare-Hope Ashiteyb. 1987GBEnglish actress
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 71 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 25K | #1,377 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 838 | #1,377 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 283 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 118 | #2,583 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 108 | #7,326 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 32 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 25 | #15,672 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2009 | 7 | #453 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1999 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2016 | 3 | #440 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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
- What does the name Clare mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Person from Clare, Suffolk or Oxfordshire; (ii) from the female personal name Clare/Claire, from Latin Clara ‘renowned one’; (iii) worker with clay. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Clare?
- In the etymology graph, Clara, Claire and Kiara are forms of the same name in other languages; Claribel and Clarette are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Clare a male or female name?
- Clare is a female 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.
- In which country does Clare have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 million people named Carrie in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Clare?
- In the United States, the national register counted 163,948 people named Claire in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Clare compared with other names?
- In Norway, Clare is the 37th most common given name of 25,788 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Clare?
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/clareThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Clare” — the 37th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.