Clara

I'm from England and have never heard this name pronounced Clair-uh. It is Cluh-ruh, where I am from. South London. To me, that is the intuitive pronunciation.

I'm from England and have never heard this name pronounced Clair-uh. It is Cluh-ruh, where I am from. South London. To me, that is the intuitive pronunciation.

Growing up in England, I heard only the pronunciation Clair-uh. It was the way people pronounced the name of the famous singer Dame Clara Butt, for example, as well as the well-known variety of tulip named after her. I have seen some discussion regarding the name Clara on another site which implies that Clair-uh is the Yorkshire pronunciation. However, I grew up in the far south of England, and Clara was Clair-uh there too.I was startled when a fairly recent British television production of "David Copperfield" had the character Clara Peggotty's name pronounced the European continental way. That is not the way Dickens or the Victorian English would have pronounced it.

My name is pronounced claire-uh, but I'm fine with any pronunciation. If someone calls me cl-are-uh, I'm fine with it.

I am the fifth Clara in my family, but since my sister Louise calls me "clar-RAH", accompanied with a real nasal whine, I started telling new people that I was "Clare". My favorite teacher was Sister Mary Robert Clare, so I loved being a "Clare" too. If only I could be a KLAR-rah.. it won't happen in Toledo, but my English friend Jillian always had a lovely way of calling me Cla-aire, with such a melodic tone, with lots of "aire" well, it was precious!

Clara Oswald is amazing but it should be pronounced K-lar-ruh.

I love the Clair-Uh pronunciation. Cla-Rah sounds harsh and weird to me.

My cousin is called Clara, and she says it like klaruh, I prefer it like that to klareuh or however they say it.

Listen to the German pronunciation of Clara here:
http://www.nordicnames.de/Aussprache.html

I've never heard an American say "Clara", so maybe they rhyme it with Sarah. But I've heard plenty of English (UK) people say it, plus many radio announcers introducing or referring to Dame Clara Butt, and they've all used the Continental pronunciation (ah, not air) with one exception: the parents of a child who must be in her twenties now but was a toddler when I met her parents; they explained that they had been unable to choose between Sarah and Clare when she was born, so they merged them. And this caused genuine surprise. A lot can change in twenty years, of course. I'd be interested to know!