BAUD rate things

"baud rate" is a common term for when people really mean "bit rate", or "bits per second".
A baud rate of 9600 means 9600 bits are sent per second.
The most common RS232 format requires 10 bits to send each byte, so at 9600 baud you can send 960 bytes per second.
A baud rate can also be expressed in kHz, so 9600 baud is 9.6 kHz. It means the same thing.

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For transmitting the sending frequency can be the baud rate.

But for receiving, it helps to be able check the line at a greater rate, like 8 or 16 times the expected incoming baudrate.

That's because your goal is to sample the bit values around the center of their pulse. The more finely you can detect the time of the initial shift of the start bit, the more finely you can place the sampling instant near the center of each arriving bit.

So for a general purpose utility, either a discrete UART chip or software that both transmits and receives, the specified driving clock rate will likely be required to be 8 or 16 times the expected incoming baud.