Clarus (bright or clear) was used by the Romans in the sense of famous,
and St. Clarus is revered as the first bishop of Nantes in Brittany, in
A.D. 280. Another Clarus, said to have been a native of Rochester, was a
hermit, near Rouen, where he was murdered at the instigation of a wicked
woman who had vainly paid her addresses to him. Two villages of St.
Clair, one on the Epte, the other near Coutance, are interesting as
having (one or the other of them) named two of the most noted families
in the history of Great Britain, besides the various De St. Clairs of
France, who came either from thence or from a third St. Clair in
Aquitaine.
A Norman family, called from one of these villages, became the De
Clares. ‘Red De Clare,’ stout Glo’ster’s earl, the foe of Henry III.,
was one of them; and his son marrying into the house of Geraldin, in
Ireland, received from Edward I. a grant of lands in Thomond, now known
from his lordship as County Clare. His heiress carried the county to the
De Burghs, and their heiress again marrying Lionel, son of Edward III.,
the county becoming a dukedom and royal appanage, was amplified into
Clarence, and gave title to Clarencieux—king-at-arms, when Thomas,
brother of Henry V., was Duke of Clarence—unless this be from Clare, in
Suffolk. Clarence as a male Christian name did not solely arise when
William IV. was Duke of Clarence, but began as early as 1595, when
Clarence Babbington was christened at Hartlepool.
Spanish ballad lore gives a daughter, Clara, to Charlemagne, and a son,
Don Claros de Montablan, to Rinaldo, and of course marries them; but it
is to Italy that the feminine name, so much more universal, is owing.
The first Chiara on record was the devoted disciple of St. Francis, who,
under his direction, established the order of women following his rule,
and called, poor Clares, or sisters of St. Clara. From them the name of
Clara spread into the adjoining countries, little varied except that the
French used to call it Claire, until recently, when they have added the
terminal _a_, just as the English on the other hand are dropping it, and
making the word Clare. The Bretons use both masculine and feminine as
Sklear, Skleara; and the Finns have the feminine as Lara.
The old Latin feminine of words ending in _or_, meaning the doer, was
_ix_—_nutor_, _nutrix_—and this became _ice_ in modern Italian. Thus
Clarice was probably intended to mean making famous. A lady thus named
was the wife of Lorenzo de Medici, and France learnt it probably from
her, but made the _c_ silent; and England, picking it up by ear,
obtained Clarissa, which, when Richardson had so named the heroine of
his novel, was re-imported into France as Clarisse. Clarinda was another
invention of the same date.
Esclairmonde, a magnificent name of romance, the heroine of _Huon de
Bourdeaux_, walked into real life with a noble damsel of the house of
Foix, in the year 1229, and was borne by various maidens of that family;
but who would have thought of two ladies called Clarimond, in
Devonshire, in 1613 and 1630?