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Cornelia vs Cory

American parents have registered 133,778 Corys since 1880, against 22,102 Cornelias. Cory is still ahead, with 174 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cornelia against Cory, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cornelia Cory

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Cornelia for 75 years and Cory for 71 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Cornelia Cory
Total US births 22,102133,778
Most in one year 4776,660
Babies in 2025 51174
Estimated living today 7,100125,000
Median age today 6638
Peak year 19211989
Best rank 300th girls61st boys
Rank in 2025 3,130th1,244th
First recorded 18801924
Girls / boys 22,076 / 266,599 / 127,179

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Cornelias alive today are over 66; half the Corys are over 38. That is 28 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cornelia Cory
England and Wales 2063,185
France 580280
Ireland 39124

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Cornelia and Cory.