Clarence

82,717 people in America carry this name — ranked #639 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it KLEH ruhns

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K L EH1 R AH0 N S — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 82,717 2020 Census
  • Rank #639 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 27.4 about 1 in 4,007 people
  • As a surname 491 ranked #46,712 the other way round

Where Clarence comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “from Clarus, clear, bright”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Clarence through the years

304,796 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1921, with 7,367 of them.

80 90 00 10 20s 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Clarence

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Clarence Christopher — same opening
  • Clarence Charles — same opening
  • Clarence Steven — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Clarence has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Greatest Generation.

Is Clarence used for boys or for girls?

99.7% men
288 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Names with the same rhythm as Clarence

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

How Clarence is spelled

Clarence is how 14% of them spell it — 607,619 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where the name Clarence is most common in the US

In the District of Columbia the name is given 3.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • the District of Columbia ×3.5
  • Louisiana ×3.3
  • Mississippi ×2.9
  • South Carolina ×2.5
  • Alabama ×2.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin