Humanverse

Cordelia

Cordelia is a girl's name that peaked in 2015, when it was the 949th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 980th. About 7,700 Cordelias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 16.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Cordelia

By the numbers

Total US births
12,906
Estimated living today
7,700
Median age today
16
Peak year
2015
Best rank
949th
Rank in 2025
980th
First recorded
1880

How old the living Cordelias are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 12,906 babies given the name since 1880, about 7,700 are alive — 60 in every hundred. Roughly 4,000 of them are children and 1,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2009 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

Shakespeare's spelling of a historical British name appearing as Cordeilla, etc., possibly derived from the Latin saint's name Cordula.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Cordelias

People named Cordelia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Cordelia is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Cordelia is most concentrated in Virginia (2.5×), Kentucky (2.4×), Oregon (1.9×), New Mexico (1.8×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2015

The most popular girls’ names the year Cordelia peaked:

All the names of 2015

Cordelia elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Cordelia 1,201 650th
France girls Cordelia +1 spelling 260 1,538th
Scotland girls Cordelia 9 687th
Belgium girls Cordelia 5 1,484th
Ireland girls Cordelia 3 606th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Cordelia among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland girls Cordelia 24

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Related names

Cordelia against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Cordelia with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.