Clarissa (given name)
{{Infobox given name| name = Clarissa
| image = | imagesize = | caption =
| pronunciation =
| gender = Female | meaning = clear, bright, famous
| region = | origin = Latin, Italian, Portuguese
| related names = Clara, Clarisse, Clarice, Clare, Clair, Sinclair, St. Clair
}}
File:2012_CLARISSA_GAROTINHO_CANDIDATO_VICE-PREFEITO_RJ_RIO_DE_JANEIRO_TSE_(190000008228).jpg , Brazilian politician and journalist, born 1982]]
Clarissa is a female given name borrowed from Latin, Italian, and Portuguese, 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 {{linktext|-issa}}, equivalent to {{linktext|-ess}}. Clarice is an anglicization of Clarisse, the French form of the same name. Clarisa is the Spanish form of the name, and Klárisza the Hungarian.{{cite book |last=Norman |first=Tessa |date=July 2003 |title=A World of Baby Names |url=https://archive.org/details/worldofbabynames00norm_1/page/126 |location=New York |publisher=Perigree |page=[https://archive.org/details/worldofbabynames00norm_1/page/126 126] |isbn=0-399-52894-6 |url-access=registration }} The given names Clara, Clare, and Claire are all cognates, as are the surnames Sinclair and St. Clair.
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