Clarissa
- Pronunciation
- [Cla-ri-ssa]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Clear
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Clarissa
Clarissa is a Latinate elaboration of Clara, from the Latin clarus meaning clear, bright, or famous. The extended form Clarissa was used in medieval and early modern Europe before achieving particular literary prominence in eighteenth-century England, when Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa (1748) — one of the longest novels in the English language — made the name recognizable across the literate world. That literary association gave Clarissa an air of both classical learning and romantic sentiment, distinguishing it from its plainer root Clara.
In SSA records, Clarissa first entered the top-1000 in 2000 and peaked at #325 in 2001, accumulating 12,387 top-1000 births across its tracked run. The name maintained a gradual but sustained presence through the 2000s and 2010s before fading in its final years on the chart: #747 with 378 births in 2019, #912 with 286 births in 2020, and a final tracked appearance at #949 with 278 births in 2021.
Recorded variants include Clairisse, Clara, Clarisse, and Klarissa — a set that spans French-influenced spellings, the base Latin form, and a German-style K-variant. Clarissa's four-syllable elegance and its Latinate clarity of meaning give it a formal yet melodic character. It occupies a distinctive niche: more ornate than Clara, less common than modern invented names, and rooted in genuine literary and linguistic tradition in a way that gives parents something substantive to anchor the choice.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Clarissa
US Popularity History (2000–2021)
Annual US births named Clarissa by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 975 girls named Clarissa (girl rank #326 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2021, ranked #949 for girls (278 US births). That's 623 places below its 2000 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Clarissa Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Clarissa the strongest states are California, Texas, Utah.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #503 | 730 |
| 2 | Texas | #533 | 600 |
| 3 | Utah | #581 | 27 |
| 4 | Arizona | #611 | 88 |
| 5 | Washington | #760 | 63 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #768 | 49 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #776 | 18 |
| 8 | Indiana | #813 | 23 |
| 9 | Illinois | #823 | 98 |
| 10 | Florida | #867 | 124 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #1,057 | 48 |
| 2 | Virginia | #917 | 40 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #906 | 20 |
| 4 | New Jersey | #878 | 31 |
| 5 | Florida | #867 | 124 |
| 6 | Illinois | #823 | 98 |
| 7 | Indiana | #813 | 23 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #776 | 18 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #768 | 49 |
| 10 | Washington | #760 | 63 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Clarissa in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Clarissa?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Clarissa to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Clarissa against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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