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Cortez vs Cory

American parents have registered 133,778 Corys since 1880, against 10,988 Cortezes. Cory is still ahead, with 174 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cortez against Cory, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cortez Cory

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 115 years in which either name was published, Cory for 83 years and Cortez for 32 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Cortez Cory
Total US births 10,988133,778
Most in one year 3516,660
Babies in 2025 101174
Estimated living today 10,000125,000
Median age today 2838
Peak year 19901989
Best rank 532nd boys61st boys
Rank in 2025 1,654th1,244th
First recorded 18821924
Girls / boys 89 / 10,8996,599 / 127,179

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Corys alive today are over 38; half the Cortezes are over 28. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Cortez Cory
England and Wales 373,185

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Cortez and Cory.