Clarissa (given name)

Clarissa

Gender	Female
Origin
Word/name	Latin, Italian, Portuguese
Meaning	clear, bright, famous
Other names
Related names	Clara, Clarisse, Clarice, Clare, Clair, Sinclair, St. Clair
[1]

Clarissa Garotinho, Brazilian politician and journalist, born 1982

Clarissa is a female given name borrowed from Latin, Italian, and Portuguese, ^[1] originally denoting a nun of the Roman Catholic Order of St. Clare. It is a combination of St. Clare of Assisi's Latin name Clara (originally meaning "clear" and "bright") and the suffix -issa , equivalent to -ess . Clarice is an anglicization of Clarisse, the French form of the same name. Clarisa is the Spanish form of the name, ^[1] and Klárisza the Hungarian. ^[2] The given names Clara, Clare, and Claire are all cognates.

Notable people

• Clara Barton (Clarissa Harlowe Barton, 1821–1912), American humanitarian who founded the American Red Cross
• Clarissa Britain (1816–1895), American inventor
• Clarissa Danforth (1792-1855), first woman ordained as a Free Will Baptist minister
• Clarissa Davis (born 1967), American coach and women's basketball hall-of-famer
• Clarissa Dickson Wright (1947–2014), English celebrity chef
• Clarissa F. Dye (1832–1921), Civil War nurse from Philadelphia
• Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (1920–2021)
• Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born 1945), American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst
• Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop (1847–1892), American social reformer, autobiographer
• Clarissa Kaye (1931–1994), Australian stage, film and television actress
• Clarissa Ward (born 1980), British-American television journalist
• Clarissa Wei, American journalist and writer
• Clarissa Stadler (born 1966), Austrian journalist, moderator and writer

Fictional characters

• Clarissa Explains It All , a children's TV show in the 1990s
• Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway , a 1925 novel by Virginia Woolf
• Clarissa "Clary" Fray in The Mortal Instruments novel series
• Clarissa Harlowe, the heroine of Samuel Richardson's 1748 tragic epistolary novel Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady
• Clarissa Hailsham-Brown in Spider's Web , a 1954 play by Agatha Christie
• Clarissa Mellon in Enduring Love , a 1997 novel by Ian McEwan
• Clarissa Saunders in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , a 1939 film
• Clarissa Vaughan in The Hours , a 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham

See also

• Clarissa (disambiguation)
• Poor Clares, nuns of the Order of St Clare, also called the Clarissas or Clarisses
• Claire (given name)
• Clara (given name)
• Clare (given name)
• Clarice

References

1. Bruggeman, David. "Clarissa," WikiName - All About Names Archived 2009-08-13 at the Wayback Machine
2. Norman, Tessa (July 2003). A World of Baby Names . New York: Perigree. p.  126. ISBN   0-399-52894-6.