Corey
- Pronunciation
- [Co-rey]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Seething Pool
- Origin
- Scottish
About the Name Corey
Corey descends from the Old Irish surname Ó Cobhthaigh, meaning "descendant of Cobhthach" — Cobhthach being the Old Irish personal name meaning "victorious." An alternate etymology connects Corey to the Old Norse Kori meaning "helmet" or to the Scottish-Gaelic coire meaning "seething pool/cauldron" (from the rocky inlet of the same name).
Notable bearers include the iconic American basketball player Corey Maggette (born 1979, the American NBA player); American actor Corey Feldman (born 1971, the iconic American actor of The Goonies 1985 and Stand by Me 1986); American actor Corey Haim (1971–2010, the iconic American actor of The Lost Boys 1987); and the iconic American politician Corey Booker (born 1969, the American politician and US Senator from New Jersey since 2013).
Corey held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1979 through 1995 — about fifteen years of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1985 (the year of The Goonies) at #45 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name is also occasionally used for girls. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Irish-Gaelic heritage, and the popular two-syllable -ey ending family (Corey, Casey, Bailey, Riley). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Irish and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Cor (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Corie each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Corey, Cory, Korey, and Kory have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old Irish Ó Cobhthaigh.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Corey
US Popularity History (1969–2025)
Annual US births named Corey by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1989 with 8,004 boys named Corey (boy rank #55 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #778 for boys (327 US births). That's 723 places below its 1989 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 Corey Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Corey the strongest states are Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #325 | 164 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #329 | 96 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #391 | 119 |
| 4 | Nevada | #392 | 23 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #402 | 110 |
| 6 | Connecticut | #410 | 50 |
| 7 | Georgia | #412 | 256 |
| 8 | Maryland | #414 | 127 |
| 9 | Arkansas | #432 | 48 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #443 | 81 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | #746 | 48 |
| 2 | Texas | #689 | 376 |
| 3 | California | #688 | 374 |
| 4 | Colorado | #685 | 27 |
| 5 | Arizona | #676 | 70 |
| 6 | Minnesota | #647 | 30 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | #646 | 35 |
| 8 | Oregon | #606 | 21 |
| 9 | Kansas | #588 | 15 |
| 10 | Indiana | #575 | 100 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Corey in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Corey?
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 Corey to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Corey against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).