Cory
113,340 people in America carry this name — ranked #496 of 923.
Carried mostly by the Millennials.
Say it KAW ree
2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
K AO1 R IY2 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
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People counted 113,340 2020 Census
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As a surname 5,229 ranked #6,262 the other way round
Where Cory comes from and what it means
Reads literally as “correy, local, a town in Scotland”.
Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.
Cory through the years
132,764 babies were given this name since 1924. The busiest year was 1989, with 6,661 of them.
Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. It has been given less often of late.
Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.
Middle names for Cory
Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.
Better avoided
- Cory Christopher — same opening
- Cory Charles — same opening
- Cory Carlos — same opening
Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.
Going quiet
Cory has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.
Is Cory a boy's or a girl's name?
As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.
Who has this name today
- White alone (non-Hispanic) — 80.4%
- Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 10.1%
- Hispanic or Latino origin — 3.7%
- Two or more races — 3.8%
- Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.1%
- American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%
Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.
Names with the same rhythm as Cory
Ends on the same sound
- Michael 3,476,721
- David 2,813,017
- Robert 2,759,339
- William 2,240,114
- Mary 1,768,343
- Daniel 1,607,193
- Joseph 1,600,667
- Richard 1,575,998
- Thomas 1,506,606
- Matthew 1,315,151
Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.
How Cory is spelled
Cory is how 66% of them spell it — 172,252 people answer to the sound.
- Cory 66%
- Cora 34%
Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.
Names about as common
The nearest entries above and below by number of people.
Try it How Rare Is It?
Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.
Where this page gets its numbers
- Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
- Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
- Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.
Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers