An honest double root: sometimes the English occupational ‘clerk’ outright, sometimes an anglicised Ó Cléirigh, the hereditary scribes of Tír Chonaill.
The Clarke certificate.
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Mixed Origin · Root meaning ‘clerk, scribe’
Clarke is one of the names on this list with a genuinely mixed origin, and we'll say so plainly: for some families it's the English occupational surname for a clerk or scholar; for others it's an anglicisation of the Gaelic Ó Cléirigh, a Donegal family of hereditary historians and scribes. It was the Uí Chléirigh who produced the Annals of the Four Masters in the 1630s — one of the great works of Irish history.
Whichever root is yours, the name has always meant the same thing: someone whose trade was the written word, in a country that took its history seriously.
Irish form: Ó Cléirigh
