Clete
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Clete has been given to 281 babies in the U.S. since 1948. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1965, with 18 recorded.
Babies named Clete, 2017
1 in 596,000
Clete over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Clete?
Clete had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2017, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2017
- 1 in 596,000
- 6 of 3,577,106 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 308,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2017
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 413,245 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Clete sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2017 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 413,245 children born in 2017 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Clete. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Cletes were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Clete was born before 1969 — so the typical Clete is around 56 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1960s
- 34.2% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 14.6%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 275
- People you could plausibly meet
1960s — 34.2% of all recorded uses (96).
Is Clete rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1965 (18)
- Years since peak
- 60
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 35.6% average annual change
Spellings of Clete
Clete is not the most common spelling — Lee is, with 49.4% against Clete's 0.06%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Where Clete is used
Across 1910–2025, Clete was most concentrated in California — about 1 in — boys, against 1 in 3,486,540 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1California1 in —
Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Clete has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Clete by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Clete
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Clete
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.