Clare
Masculine · “bright”
Clare is given to both — 3,054 boys and 31,456 girls since 1880. See Clare as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Clare wrote the first monastic rule composed by a woman for women, and she spent forty years getting it approved. Rome kept sending her rules written by men instead; she kept refusing them; the papal bull confirming hers reached her bed two days before she died.
How old is the name Clare?
Clare was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Clare alive today was born around 1925, making them about 100 years old. About 600 people named Clare are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Clare most popular?
Clare peaked in 1893, reaching #459 nationally. See the whole 1893 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From clarus to Clare
The story of Clare
Clare of Assisi ran away from a wealthy family at eighteen to follow Francis, founded an order, and then spent the rest of her life defending the one thing she cared about most: the right of her community to own nothing at all. Successive popes offered her comfortable rules with property attached, on the reasonable grounds that women could not beg safely; she refused each of them and wrote her own. It was approved in the summer of her death. English kept the name in the plain Latin spelling that Italian and Latin both use; France softened it to Claire, and English families have used both ever since without treating them as the same name.
Meaning
bright, clear
From the Latin clarus, which meant clear and then, by extension, famous or distinguished. The sense has never been disputed.
How the name formed
- clarus
- Chiara
- Clare
Related forms: Chiara · Claire · Clara · Klara
Pronouncing Clare
KLAIR
One syllable, rhyming with air. Italian gives it two, kee-AH-rah, and Spanish two as Clara.
Nicknames for Clare
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 192594 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #459reached in 1893
- Change vs 1978
- 0.0%5 in 1999, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Clare in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Chiara in Italian — same name
- Claire in French — same name
- Clara in Spanish — same name
- Klara in German — same name
Clares among us
people named Clare are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Clare sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- One syllable and five letters, with no possible mispronunciation in English.
- It has a form in every western European language.
- The meaning is short, bright and settled, and easy to explain to a child.
- It has an unbroken run in American records from the first year they were kept.
- Claire is the commoner spelling in America and will be written instead.
- It is also an English word and an Irish county, and both will come up.
- The spelling is recorded for a small number of boys, though it reads overwhelmingly as a girl's name.
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What they receive
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Clare
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Clares are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Clare are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Clare in 2025?
- Clare is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Clare with classmates?
- Clare will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Charles#48 · Christopher#68 · Carl#1132 · Christian#96 · Caleb#58 · Cameron#76 · Carlos#150 · Clarence#1499
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Clare? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Clare and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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