From Greek 'Anakletos' meaning called forth or invoked; borne by an early pope (St. Cletus).
Cletus is an Anglicized form of the Greek "Kletos," from the verb "kalein," to call or to summon — meaning literally "the called one" or "one who has been summoned." In early Christian theology this carried profound weight: to be called was to receive divine vocation, a sense of being chosen for a purpose larger than oneself. Anacletus, the full Greek form meaning "the called back" or "recalled," was the name of the third Pope of Rome, who led the church in the first century CE following Saints Peter and Linus.
The shortened form Cletus was used in early Christian communities as an honorific name connecting a child to this apostolic lineage. Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, Cletus remained in use in Catholic communities, particularly in rural areas of Ireland, Germany, and the American Midwest where German and Irish Catholic immigrants settled. It was never a dominant name, but it maintained a quiet presence in church records and family bibles across those communities through the nineteenth century.
Several American bishops and a handful of minor American politicians bore the name with dignity in the Victorian era. In the twentieth century, Cletus suffered a significant cultural reversal, becoming associated in American popular imagination with rural caricature — most vividly through Cletus Spuckler, the recurring "slack-jawed yokel" of The Simpsons, introduced in 1995. This association has been difficult to shake.
Yet names have recovered from such cultural setbacks before, and Cletus possesses genuine early Christian gravitas that parents willing to look past recent stereotypes will find. It is, at its root, a name about being called — a beautiful idea for a child whose arrival felt like an answer to a long-asked question.