Cora

Two syllables, one clean vowel at the center, and suddenly a name feels like a small bell. Cora descends from the Greek Kore, an epithet for Persephone meaning "maiden," and it entered English literature through James Fenimore Cooper's Cora Munro in The Last of the Mohicans. After decades of quiet, the name vaulted back into the U.S. top 100 in the 2010s, riding the broader return of short, vintage girls' names. It pairs effortlessly with almost any surname and feels at once antique and freshly scrubbed. Cora is the kind of name you can whisper across a room without losing any of its shape.