Claude
Masculine · “lame”
Claude is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 91,337 boys against 952 girls since 1880. See Claude as a girl 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 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 29,000 people named Claude are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Claude most popular?
Claude peaked in 1887, reaching #46 nationally. Today it ranks #3036, 2,990 places below that high. See the whole 1887 chart.
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 boys named
- 19211,887 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #46reached in 1887
- Change vs 2022
- +17.6%40 in 2025, from 34
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
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, New York, Georgia.
Claudes among us
people named Claude are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 42,702 born in 2025 was named Claude
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
Claude 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
Where Claude is headed
Claude should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Claude beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Claude in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
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
Masculine · #3036 in the U.S.
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 29,000 people named Claude are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Claude in 2025?
- Claude ranks #3036 among US boy names in 2025, with 40 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Claude?
- About 1 in every 42,702 US boys born in 2025 was named Claude — 40 in all.
- Will my child share the name Claude with classmates?
- Claude will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Claude
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Williams#3036 · Collier#3036 · Amadou#3036 · Kavion#3036 · Sheppard#3036 · Koi#3036 · Sailor#3036 · Loren#3036
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Claude? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Claude and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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