Clarissa
Fewer than 60 women in Poland carry this name, so most people here have never met one. It comes from Latin, carrying the sense of bright and clear.
Clarissa Pronunciation
What Clarissa means
Where Clarissa comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Clarissa grows from the Latin clarus, meaning bright and clear. It is a Latinate elaboration of Clara, the same root that lights up Clare and the Italian Chiara. The Romans used the word for things that shone and voices that carried far.
English readers met the name in full in 1748, when Samuel Richardson published Clarissa, one of the longest novels in the language. His heroine gave the name a literary weight it had lacked before, and English parents began to use it in earnest. In Italy the same brightness lives in Chiara, the name of Saint Clare of Assisi.
On a Polish class register today, Clarissa reads as borrowed, a little foreign, and easy to say. The meaning stays legible under the spelling. Jasna, czysta. Whatever else it gathers, the name keeps the old Latin sense of clarus: bright, clear.
How many people are named Clarissa
1 in 382099 women in Poland is named Clarissa. 59 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4802 among female names.
Clarissa's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Clarissa as a middle name
Clarissa is a first name for 59 women in Poland and a middle name for another 16, a 79/21 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1821st, between Chido (16) and Czeslawa (16).
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#1819 Bratumiła16
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#1820 Chido16
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#1821 Clarissa16
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#1822 Czeslawa16
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#1823 Eda16