Claribel
Feminine · “bright and beautiful”
Claribel has spent most of its life in books rather than in rooms. Shakespeare gives it to a princess in The Tempest who is married off to Tunis and never appears on stage. Tennyson wrote a poem called Claribel before he was twenty. A Victorian songwriter took it as a pen name and put it into every parlor in England.
How old is the name Claribel?
Claribel first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Claribel alive today was born around 1974, making them about 51 years old. About 1,800 people named Claribel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Claribel most popular?
Claribel peaked in 1881, reaching #623 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 10,294 places below that high. See the whole 1881 chart.
Where it comes from
From clarus to Claribel
The story of Claribel
The -bel names appear in English between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and they are hard to pin down individually, because the ending spread by imitation once it existed: Amabel produced Annabel, Annabel encouraged Christabel, and Claribel arrived among them. Spenser used it, Shakespeare used it, and it kept a literary flavor for three hundred years without becoming ordinary. In the nineteenth century a songwriter published under the single name Claribel, and her ballads were sold as sheet music by the hundred thousand at exactly the moment American parents were looking for names with a little music in them. It has been used steadily in Spanish-speaking families since, where the stress falls on the last syllable.
Meaningscholars disagree
bright and beautiful
Two accounts, and they overlap. One reads the whole word as Latin: clarus, bright or famous, with bellus, beautiful. The other treats it as Clara with the -bel ending that English attached to several names in the same centuries — Annabel, Christabel, Maribel — where -bel is a suffix rather than a word. Either way both halves are Latin and both are flattering.
How the name formed
- clarus
- Clara
- Claribel
Related forms: Claribel · Claribelle
Pronouncing Claribel
KLAIR-uh-bel
Three syllables, stress on the first, in English. Spanish puts it on the last, klah-ree-BEL, which changes the whole shape of the word. Both are correct in their own language.
Nicknames for Claribel
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
- 1881
- Most girls named
- 1984117 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #623reached in 1881
- Change vs 2022
- −38.5%8 in 2025, from 13
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.
Claribel in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Claribel in Spanish — same name
- Claribelle in French — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas.
Claribels among us
people named Claribel are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Claribel
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Claribel sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Claribel beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Claribel in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two ordinary Latin words, so the meaning needs no defending.
- Three short forms, two of which are full names elsewhere.
- A documented literary record going back four centuries.
- It reads as ornate, and three syllables of ornament in front of a long surname is a lot.
- English and Spanish stress it differently, so a bilingual family will hear two names.
- Clarabelle, with that spelling, has been a cow and a clown in American cartoons, and some people will remember that first.
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What they receive
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Claribel
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Claribels are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,800 people named Claribel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Claribel in 2025?
- Claribel ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Claribel?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Claribel — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Claribel with classmates?
- Claribel will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Claribel
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Adell#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Claribel? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Claribel and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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