Everyday LifeGreek → English
Cora
/ˈkɔːrə/proper noun
A girl's name, revived in English from the Greek word for a young woman.
The Greek roots
κόρη
kórē
girl, maiden
Literally: “maiden”
Follow a root:κόρη2 words
The story of the word
Κόρη was Persephone's title before her abduction, simply The Maiden, and the marble girls standing in archaic Greek sanctuaries are korai. The same word means the pupil of the eye, for the small figure you see reflected in someone else's, and Latin arrived at pupilla by exactly the same thought. English use took off after James Fenimore Cooper named Cora Munro in The Last of the Mohicans in 1826.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
Cora was named after a great-grandmother nobody in the family ever met.
There are three girls called Cora in her year at school.