Clara (given name)
Clara or Klara is a female given name. It is the feminine form of the Late Latin name Clarus which meant "clear, bright, famous". Various early male Christian saints were named Clarus; the feminine form became popular after the 13th-century Saint Clare of Assisi, one of the followers of Saint Francis, who renounced her privileged background and founded the order of Poor Clares.
Clare was the main English form of the name used in the Middle Ages, but the Latin spelling Clara became more popular in the 19th century.
Glara is a related Kurdish name with a common origin, meaning "vision or brightness".
People with this name
Given name
- Clara Alm, Swedish footballer
- Clara Amfo, British broadcaster and presenter
- Clara Arthur, American suffragist
- Klara Ashrafyan, Soviet Indologist
- Clara Ayres, American nurse during the First World War
- Clara Azurmendi, Spanish badminton player
- Clara Barton, pioneer American teacher, nurse and humanitarian
- Clara Basiana, Spanish former competitor in synchronized swimming
- Clara Doty Bates, American author
- Clara Nettie Bates, American editor, writer, clubwoman
- Clara Bancroft Beatley, American educator, lecturer, author
- Clara Beranger, American screenwriter of the silent film era
- Clara Beyers, American actress
- Clara Bindi, Italian actress
- Clara Blandick, American actress
- Clara Bonde, Swedish courtier and royal favourite
- Clara Bow, American actress
- Clara T. Bracy, English stage and silent film actress
- Clara Brown, former enslaved woman from Virginia and Kentucky who became a community leader and philanthropist
- Clara Louise Burnham, American novelist
- Clara Butt, English contralto
- Clara Calamai, Italian actress
- Clara H. Sully Carhart, Canadian-born American educator and reformer
- Klara Castanho, Brazilian actress
- Klára Červenková, Czech geographer
- Clara Germana Cele, South African woman stated in 1906 to have suffered demonic possession
- Clara Marguerite Christian, first black woman to study at the University of Edinburgh
- Clara Chung, Korean-American singer/guitarist also known by her stage name, Clara C
- Clara Rankin Coblentz, American social reformer
- Clara Collet, British economist and civil servant
- Clara Novello Davies, Welsh singer
- Clara Driscoll, Texas-born philanthropist
- Clara Eliot, economist
- Clara Faragó, Hungarian chess master
- Clara Shortridge Foltz, first female attorney on the Pacific Coast, suffrage leader, founder of the public defender movement
- Clara Friedman, Israeli chess player
- Clara Furse, Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange, and the first woman to occupy the position
- Clara Grima, Spanish mathematician
- Clara Hammerl, Mallorcan teacher and first woman to lead a Spanish financial institution
- Clara Haskil, Romanian classical pianist, renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire
- Clara Hätzlerin, professional scribe in 15th century Augsburg
- Clara H. Hazelrigg, American author, educator and social reformer
- Clara Henriette , French cyclist
- Clara de Hirsch, Belgian businesswoman and philanthropist
- Clara Cleghorn Hoffman, American educator and temperance reformer
- Klara Honegger, Swiss suffragist and pacifist activist
- Clara Horton, American actress
- Clara Hughes, Canadian athlete who has won medals in both the summer and winter Olympics
- Klára Hymlárová, Czech ice hockey player
- Clara Immerwahr, German chemist, first wife of Fritz Haber
- Clara-Jumi Kang, South Korean-German musician
- Clara Louise Kellogg, American soprano
- Clara Klingenström, Swedish singer-songwriter
- Klára B. Kokas, Hungarian art director
- Klára Koukalová, Czech tennis player
- Clara Shafira Krebs, Indonesian beauty pageant titleholder, model, and entrepreneur
- Klara Kristalova, Czech sculptor
- Clara Lachmann, Danish-Swedish patron of the arts
- Clara LaMore, American competition swimmer
- Clara Landsberg, American educator
- Clara Lanza, American novelist
- Clara Larter, English botanist
- Clara Ledesma, Dominican artist
- Clara Lee, South Korean actress
- Clara Lemlich, union organizer, consumer activist, member of the Communist Party
- Clara Lescurat, Argentine professional boxer
- Clara López, Colombian politician
- Klara Luchko, Soviet actress
- Clara Luciani, French singer-songwriter and musician
- Clara Luper, American civil rights leader
- Clara Maass, American nurse
- Clara MacNaughton, American dentist and suffragist
- Clara Mamet, American actress
- Clara Maniu, Romanian feminist
- Clara McMillen, American researcher
- Clara Milburn, British diarist
- Klara Milch, Austrian swimmer
- Clara Moneke, Brazilian actress and model
- Clara Jessup Moore, American philanthropist and philosopher
- Clara Morgane, French porn star and singer
- Clara Mulholland, Irish writer
- Klara Myrén, Swedish ice hockey player
- Clara Neal, English teacher and suffragist
- Clara Ng, Indonesian writer
- Clara Novello, English soprano
- Clara Nunes, Brazilian singer
- Klara Izabella Pacowa, politically active Polish court official
- Clara Pacini, French actress
- Clara Paget, British model and actress
- Clara Peeters, 17th century Flemish painter
- Clara Pereira, Brazilian rhythmic gymnast
- Clara Petacci, mistress of Benito Mussolini
- Clara Pinto-Correia, Portuguese novelist
- Clara Ponsatí, Catalan economist and politician
- Clara Raven, American physician
- Clara Reeve, English novelist
- Clara Rockmore, Lithuanian virtuosa of the theremin
- Klara Rumyanova, Soviet actress, voice of Cheburashka
- Clara Sanchez, Spanish novelist
- Clara Schønfeld, Danish actress
- Clara Schumann, German pianist, composer
- Clara Segura, Catalan actress
- Clara Seley, Russian Empire-born American visual artist
- Clara Shafira Krebs, Indonesian beauty queen
- Clara Sherman, Navajo artist
- Clara Soccini, Italian singer-songwriter, actress and model
- Clara Sorrenti, Canadian Twitch streamer and transgender activist, known online as Keffals
- Clara Sosa, Paraguayan model, television personality and beauty queen
- Clara Southern, Australian artist
- Clara E. Speight-Humberston, Canadian research scientist and scientific writer
- Clara Harrison Stranahan, American author, college founder
- Clara Swain, American physician and Christian missionary
- Clara Tauson, Danish tennis player
- Clara Thomas (academic), Canadian academic.
- Clara Tott, German singer
- Clara Tschudi, Norwegian writer
- Clara Augusta Jones Trask, American writer
- Clara Udofa, Nigerian tennis player
- Etso Clara Ugbodaga-Ngu, Nigerian artist and teacher.
- Clara Ursin, Norwegian stage actress and opera singer
- Clara Vădineanu, Romanian handballer
- Clara Vidal, Venezuelan politician
- Clara de Vries, Dutch jazz trumpeter
- Clara Ward, American gospel singer
- Clara Webster, British dancer
- Clara Weekes, Australian educator, suffragist, labor leader and pacifist
- Clara Westhoff, German sculptor and artist
- Clara Belle Williams, first African-American graduate of New Mexico State University
- Clara Woltering, German handball goalkeeper
- Clara Kimball Young, American actress
- Clara Zetkin, German Marxist theorist and women's rights activist
Animals with this name
- Clara the Rhinoceros, female Indian rhinoceros who became famous during 17 years of touring Europe in the mid-18th century
- Clara the Cow, live mascot in Greek Mega Channel's entertainment programme ''Poly tin Kyriaki''
Fictional characters
- Clara, the protagonist in Tchaikovsky's classic ballet The Nutcracker
- Clara, the protagonist of the 2001 animated film Barbie in the Nutcracker
- Clara, a character from the 1992 musical The Muppet Christmas Carol
- Clara (Mirbeau), the main character in Octave Mirbeau's 1899 novel The Torture Garden
- Clara in Bob Dylan's 1975 surrealist film Renaldo and Clara
- Clara in E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story "The Sandman"
- Aunt Clara, a recurring character in the 1960s television series Bewitched
- Princess Clara, in the American animated television series Drawn Together
- Clara, protagonist in Elizabeth Spencer's novella The Light in the Piazza and in the book's film and musical adaptation
- Clara, the main antagonist in the 1972 animated film Snoopy Come Home
- Clara, a playable character from the gacha game Honkai: Star Rail
- Clara, a recurring character in the children's book series Henry the Duck by Robert Quackenbush
- Clara Belle in the video game MySims
- Clara Brereton, impoverished niece of Lady Denham in Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon
- Clara Clayton, wife of Doc Brown in the Back to the Future film series
- Clara Cluck, a recurring character in Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons
- Clara de Clare, a rich woman who becomes a nun in Walter Scott's poem Marmion
- Clara del Valle/Clara Davis/Clara David, a character from Philippine drama series Mara Clara (1992 TV series) and Mara Clara (2010 TV series)
- Clara Durrant in Virginia Woolf's novel Jacob's Room
- Clara Grant, main character of the movie and book Regretting You, by Coleen Hoover
- Clara Oswald, companion of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor in the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who
- Clara, one of two clowns that are playthings of the titular villain in the Doctor Who story The Celestial Toymaker
- Clara Romero, a recurring character in Netflix's Spanish Mystery series "High Seas"
- Clara Sesemann, in Johanna Spyri's novel Heidi
- Clara Stahlbaum, the main character of 2018 film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
- Clara del Valle Trueba, the clairvoyant key female figure of Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits
- Clara Weiss, a main character in the BBC TV series Vienna Blood
- Clara Yotsuba, a.k.a. Alice Yotsuba, a main character in Glitter Force Doki Doki/DokiDoki! Pretty Cure
- Klara, the main character in Klara and the Sun by the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro
- Klara Vingler, a.k.a. Kakania, a character in the videogame ''Reverse: 1999''