Cĺive

given name · Latin script

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

Cĺive 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. Recorded meaning: From Middle English cliven, from Old English clīfan (“to cleave, adhere, stick”), from Proto-West Germanic *klīban, from Proto-Germanic *klībaną (“to glue, stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (.

rarermore common
  • 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)

≈29,000 people, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
390 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Guyana

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CĺiveLatin(measured from records)
ไคล์ฟThai(measured from records)
클라이브Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Clive in GB United Kingdom, US United States, AU Australia and 5 more.

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)

Derivation of Cĺive: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Cĺive
  1. Middle Englishcliven(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishclīfan“to cleave“to cleave, adhere, stick”(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*klīban(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*klībaną“to glue“to glue, stick”(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Indo-European*gleybʰ-“to lubricate“to lubricate, stick”(measured from records)

From Middle English cliven, from Old English clīfan (“to cleave, adhere, stick”), from Proto-West Germanic *klīban, from Proto-Germanic *klībaną (“to glue, stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (“to lubricate, stick”). Cognate with Dutch kleven (“to adhere, stick”), German kleben (“to adhere, stick”), Swedish kliva (“to climb, stalk”), Icelandic klífa (“to climb, ascend”).

Sources 9

  • 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • A dictionary of surnames
  • DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
  • Irish first names

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cĺive 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.

Where Cĺive is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#306≈29,000 est.≈1 in 2.3K3Clive300
ZA South Africa#309≈23,000 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Clive118
US United States—4,5411 in 73K4.5KClive390
AU Australia#674≈4,100 est.≈1 in 6.2K3Clive187
CA Canada—≈1,300 est.≈1 in 28K1Clive146
NZ New Zealand#374≈990 est.≈1 in 5K13Clive110
JM Jamaica#121≈590 est.≈1 in 4.8K—Clive18
GY Guyana#735161 in 1.5K516Clive6

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Cĺive under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Cĺive mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English cliven, from Old English clīfan (“to cleave, adhere, stick”), from Proto-West Germanic *klīban, from Proto-Germanic *klībaną (“to glue, stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (… Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and A concise dictionary of first names and 7 other sources.
Is Cĺive a male or female name?
Cĺive 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.
In which country does Cĺive have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Cĺive in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled clive.
Where is Cĺive most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cĺive 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 Cĺive?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,541 people named Cĺive in 2020, about 1 in 73 thousand residents.
How common is Cĺive compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Cĺive is the 306th most common given name of 404,737 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cĺive?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/c%C4%BAive

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, “Cĺive” — the 306th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cĺive parses inside a full name →