Where the Clark name comes from

Clark names what somebody could do rather than what they made or where they lived. It comes from the Old English clerc and behind that the Latin clericus, a scribe, a secretary or a scholar in a religious order, and it is the same word as clerk. The first records of it appear in England in the 12th century. In Ireland it is often the anglicised form of O'Cleary, so an Irish Clark and an English Clark can be two unrelated families holding the same idea.