Cliffords

Cliffords is a plural form that can refer to several topics linked by the name Clifford. The most prominent use is as a surname; in many contexts, “the Cliffords” denotes multiple people who bear that surname.

In mathematics and geometry, the name is associated with William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879), an English mathematician whose work helped inaugurate geometric algebra. Clifford introduced what is now called Clifford algebra in the 1870s, an associative algebra generated by a vector space equipped with a quadratic form. Clifford algebras provide a framework for describing rotations and reflections in spaces of any dimension and have applications in physics, computer science, and engineering. Related concepts include the Clifford group in quantum information theory, a set of unitary operations that normalize the Pauli group and play a central role in quantum error correction and fault-tolerant computation.

In culture, Cliffords may appear as a family name or as names within literature, film, or other media. A well-known fictional use is Clifford the Big Red Dog, a children’s book character created by Norman Bridwell; the name is typically written as Clifford rather than Cliffords, but discussions of the Clifford family in fiction may reference Cliffords in plural form.

Notable individuals with the surname Clifford have contributed across politics, science, and the arts, reflecting the name’s long-standing presence in English-speaking countries.