Clare
The girl's name Clare has been in the national records since 1880, with 34,510 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 924th. About 23,000 Clares are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 29.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Clare boys named Clare
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 34,510
- Estimated living today
- 23,000
- Median age today
- 29
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 500th
- Rank in 2025
- 924th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 31,456 / 3,054
How old the living Clares are
born that year still alive today
Of the 34,510 babies given the name since 1880, about 23,000 are alive — 67 in every hundred. Roughly 6,300 of them are children and 4,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1996 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
Medieval English vernacular form of Clara, from the Latin clara, feminine of clarus (“bright, shining, clear”), a post-classical name made famous by the 13th century Saint Clara of Assisi.<br> In Oxfordshire, from Clarora, a clay slope.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Clares
- Clare of Assisi (1194–1253)Italian saint
- Clare Hollingworth (1911–2017)British journalist
- Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)American writer, politician, ambassador, journalist and anti-Communist activist
- Clare Daly (born 1968)Irish independent politician
- Clare Dennis (1916–1971)Australian swimmer, Olympic gold medallist
- Clare Torry (born 1947)British singer
- Clare Kramer (born 1974)American actress
- Clare Higgins (born 1955)British actress
People named Clare with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Clare is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Clare is most concentrated in Massachusetts (2.5×), Michigan (2.2×), New Jersey (2.0×), Pennsylvania (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Clare peaked:
Clare elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Clare | 4,477 | 52nd |
| Scotland girls | Clare | 3,176 | 52nd |
| England and Wales girls | Clare | 1,125 | 200th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Clare | 263 | 66th |
| New Zealand girls | Clare | 55 | 90th |
| France girls | Clare | 10 | 3,193rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Clare among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Clare | 9 | 32 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Clare against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.