Kory
Feminine · “Greek kore”
Kory is given to both — 1,338 girls and 14,385 boys since 1880. See Kory as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Kore means the girl, and it is Persephone's cult title: not her name but what she was called in the mysteries. It is also the technical term for an archaic Greek statue of a standing young woman, the female counterpart of the kouros.
How old is the name Kory?
Kory first appears in US birth records in 1957 — 68 years ago. The typical Kory alive today was born around 1987, making them about 38 years old. About 1,300 people named Kory are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kory most popular?
Kory peaked in 1986, reaching #2148 nationally. Today it ranks #9457, 7,309 places below that high. See the whole 1986 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Corey to Kory
The story of Kory
Persephone was worshipped at Eleusis simply as Kore, the girl, or as the Two Goddesses together with her mother Demeter, and the avoidance of the personal name is characteristic of mystery cult. Archaeology borrowed the word for a whole class of objects: the korai, standing draped female figures from the sixth century BC, are among the best known sculptures of the archaic period, and dozens were found buried on the Athenian Acropolis where they had been dumped after the Persian sack of 480. Their male counterpart is the kouros, a naked standing youth. Both types are stiff, frontal and smiling, and watching them loosen over a century is the standard way of teaching the beginning of Greek sculpture. Chloe, the green shoot, was Demeter's title in the same tradition, which puts mother and daughter in the same small set of names.
Meaningscholars disagree
Greek kore, a girl or maiden
Kory in American use is most often a respelling of Corey, an English and Irish surname of contested origin. It coincides with Greek kore, a girl or maiden, the cult title of Persephone and the standard term for an archaic statue type. The two are unconnected and the Greek word is not the source of the American name. The female peak of this spelling is 1986.
How the name formed
- Corey
- Kory
Related forms: Corey · Kori
Pronouncing Kory
KOR-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Kory, Corey, Cory and Kori are homophones with four spellings. Greek kore is KOH-ray, with a different second syllable.
Nicknames for Kory
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1957
- Most girls named
- 198950 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2148reached in 1986
- Change vs 2024
- −9.1%10 in 2025, from 11
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Kory in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Corey in English — spelling variant
- Kori in English — spelling variant
Korys among us
people named Kory are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 160,727 born in 2025 was named Kory
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kory
- #9457
- Kory on the 2025 chart
- #571
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kory went to 10 girls in 2025, but Kori, Cori and Khori and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 8 spellings went to 423, which makes it the 571st most-given girls’ name of the year — 8,886 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 3,800 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 160,727 for Kory itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Selia test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kory's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Selia climbed just as high around 1945, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Selia's path sketches the road Kory is walking now.
Kory sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Kory beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kory in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables and four letters, impossible to mispronounce.
- The K spelling is distinctive without being unclear.
- It works for both sexes.
- Corey and Cory are both commoner.
- It is read as male by many Americans.
- The resemblance to the Greek word is a coincidence.
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Kory
Feminine · #9457 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Korys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Kory are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kory?
- Kory is one of 8 recorded spellings. Kori is the more common one — 260 births in 2025 against 10 for Kory.
- How popular is the name Kory in 2025?
- Kory ranks #9457 among US girl names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kory?
- About 1 in every 160,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Kory — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kory with classmates?
- Kory will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kory
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Leta#9457 · Inga#9457 · Delphia#9457 · Cammie#9457 · Lisandra#9457 · Amee#9457 · Venecia#9457 · Annetta#9457
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kory? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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