Clarissa

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A female first name of Latin origin, popularized by the title character of Samuel Richardson's eighteenth-century novel Clarissa
2. A feminine personal name derived from Latin, borne by women and well known from Richardson's 1748 epistolary novel
3. The name of a woman, of Latin origin, made famous by the heroine of a classic eighteenth-century English novel

Etymology: The name comes from Latin "clarus", meaning "clear", "bright" or "famous". In the Middle Ages, "Clarissa" was the Latin name for the women of the religious order founded by Clare of Assisi, a follower of Saint Francis. Her nuns were known as the Poor Clares, and the Latin name came to stand for them. Italian took the Latin form as "clarissa", and English borrowed it from Italian. It is a doublet of "Clarisse", "Clare" and "Clarist", meaning these forms are all descended from the same Latin name but reached English by different routes, so one origin gave English several separate words.