Cora
The story
Cora is the Greek kore, the maiden, the word used for Persephone before she was carried underground and became a queen. English took it late. Its American life is often credited to Cora Munro in The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, though the novel is a plausible push rather than a proven cause. Our own short-form records also tie Cora to Cordelia, so a family can arrive at it from two directions. The curve is one of the more dramatic in our data: about 12,900 babies in the 1890s, 16,200 in the 1920s, then a long decline to roughly 2,100 in the 1970s, and a return to nearly 27,800 in the 2010s. Very few names come back higher than they ever were. Cora did, and it took a full century to do it.
The formal names behind Cora
Cora is an established short form of this name.
Cordelia · Latin origin · heart
Cora's name family
One shared root links 5 names across 2 languages.
Shared root: from Greek kore "maiden", Persephone's epithet, reaching modern use through Latinized Korinna and Fenimore Cooper's Cora
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Cora peaked in the 1890s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
1,465 people · the #6,375 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 142,857 · median age 9
Among people named Cora living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2010s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 388 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Cora deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Cora truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Cora fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Names like Cora · Nicknames for Cora · Middle names for Cora · Short names
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