ALICE CLARK

Originally a variant of Adelaide, representing an Old French spelling of a reduced form of Germanic Adalheidis. Alice and Adelaide were already regarded as distinct names in English during the medieval period. Alice enjoyed a surge of popularity in the 19th century and periods of favour ever since. It was the name of the central character of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872), who was based on his child friend Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

English: occupational name for a scribe or secretary, originally a member of a minor religious order who undertook such duties. The word clerc denoted a member of a religious order, from Old English cler(e)c ‘priest’, reinforced by Old French clerc. Both are from Late Latin clericus, from Greek klērikos, a derivative of klēros ‘inheritance’, ‘legacy’, with reference to the priestly tribe of Levites (see Levy) ‘whose inheritance was the Lord’. In medieval Christian Europe, clergy in minor orders were permitted to marry and so found families; thus the surname could become established. In the Middle Ages it was virtually only members of religious orders who learned to read and write, so that the term clerk came to denote any literate man.