Clarke

Where Clarke comes from

Clarke hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1780
    Clarke Abel born
    British surgeon and naturalist
  2. 1880
    First SSA year, and the peak
    #809 among boys with 6 babies — the first year on record, and still its best.
  3. 1882
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births.
  4. 1952
    Clarke Peters born
    American actor, singer, writer and director
  5. 2015
    Mostly girls from here
    Until now more boys than girls got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Clarke Abel · British surgeon and naturalist, 1780–1826
  • Clarke Peters · American actor, singer, writer and director, born 1952
  • Clarke Scholes · American swimmer, 1930–2010
  • Clarke Carlisle · English association football player, born 1979
  • Clarke MacArthur · Canadian ice hockey player, born 1985

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.