Clarence Family History

English: apparently from the name of the royal dukedom created in 1362 for Lionel the third son of Edward III who had married the heiress of the estate of Clare in Suffolk. It is a conventional rendering in French of the placename used in parallel with its conventional name in Latin Clarentia.

These names are originally those of a similarly named city founded in the 13th century by the Norman Villehardouin dynasty in the Peloponnese Greece, whose site is now called Glarentza, and its application to Clare in Suffolk is a kind of toponymic pun.

Formally the name is a parallel based on clarus ‘brilliant illustrious’ for other auspicious Latin names like Florentia as if ‘flourishing (place)’ and Valentia as if ‘strong healthy (place)’. The surname may simply have originated as a French habitational name for someone from Clare, but playing on the ducal title or possibly for a man in one of the early dukes' service.

French: variant of Clarens, a habitational name from a place so named (Hautes-Pyrénées, Gers).