Claude
Feminine · “lame”
Claude is given to boys far more often — 91,337 boys against 952 girls since 1880. See Claude as a boy name
Claude is one of the very few French names that English took whole. Not translated, not respelled, not fitted with an English ending — the French word, with its silent letters intact, said more or less as the French say it. English has been doing that with food for centuries and almost never with people.
How old is the name Claude?
Claude was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Claude alive today was born around 1926, making them about 99 years old. About 300 people named Claude are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Claude most popular?
Claude peaked in 1880, reaching #547 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From A Roman family name is formed from a word meaning lame to Claude
The story of Claude
One bearer changed how Europeans looked at scenery. Claude Lorrain, a French painter working in Rome in the sixteen-hundreds, made landscapes so admired in Britain that a century later travelers carried a device named after him: the Claude glass, a small tinted convex mirror in a case. You stood with your back to the view, held up the mirror, and saw the landscape reduced, framed, softened in tone and composed like one of his paintings. It was standard equipment for the picturesque tourist. The absurdity was noticed at the time — people had traveled to the Lake District in order to turn round and look at a mirror — but the habit lasted decades, and it did more than anything else to teach the English what a landscape was supposed to look like.
Meaning
lame
The Roman family name behind it was formed from a word meaning limping, and Roman family names were frequently unflattering in exactly this way — they described an ancestor and then outlived any embarrassment. The family that carried it became one of the most powerful in Rome, which is the usual fate of such names: the description stops being read as a description within a generation or two. French carried the name forward from the Latin and gave it to a great many people who never gave the meaning a thought.
How the name formed
- A Roman family name is formed from a word meaning lame
- French carries the name forward unchanged from Latin
- The sixteen-hundreds: Claude Lorrain paints in Rome
- Picturesque tourists carry tinted Claude glasses to view scenery
- English adopts the French spelling without alteration
Related forms: Claude · Claudius · Claudio · Claudio
Pronouncing Claude
klawd
One syllable. The e is silent and the d is fully sounded, which is the English treatment; French says it the same way. The name is never two syllables in either language, whatever the spelling suggests to a reader meeting it cold.
Nicknames for Claude
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 girls named
- 192823 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #547reached in 1880
- Change vs 1980
- 0.0%5 in 1993, 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.
Claude in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Claude in French — same name
- Claudius in Latin — related form
- Claudio in Italian — related form
- Claudio in Spanish — related form
Claudes among us
people named Claude 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
Claude 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
- A single syllable with real weight, which very few names manage
- Genuinely old, in continuous use since Rome, with a documented history
- Said the same way in English and French, so it travels without adjustment
- In America the name reads as belonging to an older generation, and it has not yet come back the way its neighbors have.
- The meaning is unflattering if a child looks it up, though it stopped describing anyone two thousand years ago.
- This spelling is recorded for daughters as well as sons, and in France it is genuinely used for both.
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Claude
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Claudes are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 300 people named Claude are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Claude in 2025?
- Claude is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Claude with classmates?
- Claude will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Carol#2239 · Cynthia#1013 · Catherine#313 · Christine#1272 · Carolyn#1222 · Christina#770 · Charlotte#2 · Cheryl#4352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Claude? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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