Coraline
- Pronunciation
- [Co-ra-line]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- From The Semi-Precious Sea Growth Coral
- Origin
- English
About the Name Coraline
Coraline descends from the Latin Coralium, ultimately from the Greek korallion meaning "coral" — referring to the iconic semi-precious sea-growth used continuously since antiquity for fine jewelry and decorative art. The name has been used continuously in French-Catholic naming traditions since the medieval period.
The name's overwhelming modern American cultural anchor is the title character of Neil Gaiman's iconic 2002 children's novella Coraline and the 2009 stop-motion animated film adaptation by Henry Selick — Coraline Jones is the iconic young heroine who discovers a parallel world behind a hidden door in her family's apartment. The Coraline cultural anchor drove substantial early-21st-century American Coraline adoption.
Coraline's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2010 to the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 200 since. The name has been used predominantly for girls in modern American naming. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built coral-sea-growth botanical/marine register, the strong Coraline contemporary children's literature/film cultural anchor, and the popular three-syllable -ine ending family (Coraline, Caroline, Madeline). Three flowing syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival-meets-modern names. The name reads as distinctly contemporary American. Common nicknames Cora (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), Corie, Lina, and the rare Coralie each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Coraline, Coralyn, and Coralin have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Coralie (French), Corallina (Italian), and the original Greek korallion.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Coraline
US Popularity History (2012–2025)
Annual US births named Coraline by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2015 with 527 girls named Coraline (girl rank #579 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #683 for girls (414 US births). That's 104 places below its 2015 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Coraline Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Coraline the strongest states are West Virginia, Nebraska, Kansas.
Strongest girls-name states
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #997 | 62 |
| 2 | Maryland | #800 | 25 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #775 | 26 |
| 4 | Georgia | #751 | 68 |
| 5 | Florida | #749 | 171 |
| 6 | Alabama | #736 | 37 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #713 | 57 |
| 8 | North Carolina | #709 | 110 |
| 9 | Arizona | #697 | 84 |
| 10 | Illinois | #696 | 145 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Coraline in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coralyn | Maiden. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Coraline?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Coraline to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Coraline against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).