Clemence
Clemence reached its high-water mark in 1917 at number 1,773, and has been recorded 966 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 10,107th. About 150 Clemences are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Clemence boys named Clemence
Girls and boys called Clemence
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 548 girls and 418 boys in all, and in 1929 the split was 10 to 17.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 12 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 966
- Estimated living today
- 150
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 1,773rd
- Rank in 2025
- 10,107th
- First recorded
- 1886
- Girls / boys
- 548 / 418
How old the living Clemences are
born that year still alive today
Of the 966 babies given the name since 1886, about 150 are alive — 16 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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
From clemence, from Latin clēmentia (“mercy; mildness”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Clemences
- Clémence Poésy (born 1982)French actress and model
- Clémence Royer (1830–1902)French philosopher and scholar
- Clemence of Austria (1262–1293)Titular Queen of Hungary
- Clemence Dane (1888–1965)English novelist
- Clémence Saint-Preux (born 1988)French singer and actress
- Clémence Beikes (born 1983)French basketball player
- Clémence de Grandval (1828–1907)French composer
- Clémence Botino (born 1997)French beauty pageant contestant
People named Clemence with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Clemence is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular girls’ names the year Clemence peaked:
Clemence elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Clémence +1 spelling | 90,120 | 24th |
| Belgium girls | Clémence +1 spelling | 2,936 | 68th |
| Switzerland girls | Clémence | 522 | 238th |
| England and Wales girls | Clemence | 278 | 1,184th |
| France boys | Clémence | 5 | 552nd |
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.
Clemence: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Clémence | 27 | 0.002% | 860th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Clémence | 495 | 0.114% | 59th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Clemence is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.17% of children were given it – 111 of them.
Clemence: rank by region
In 2025, Clemence was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Clémence | 198 | 28 |
| Wallonia | Clémence | 35 | 68 |
| Brussels | Clémence | 194 | 6 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Clemence appears in the lists for Province of Walloon Brabant (15th), Province of Liège (23rd), Province of Namur (31st), Province of Luxembourg (46th), Province of West Flanders (59th), Province of Hainaut (64th), Brussels-Capital Region (194th) and Province of East Flanders (214th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Clemence 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 | Clemence | — | 6 |
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
Clemence 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.