Corrie

About Corrie

Corrie brings together two separate naming histories. It can be a familiar form of Cora, Corinne, or Cornelia in English and Dutch, and it also comes from a Scottish surname connected with a bowl-shaped hollow in the landscape. Dutch rescuer and writer Corrie ten Boom gives the name a particularly significant twentieth-century association.

Meaning and pronunciation

As a nickname, Corrie retains the beginning of longer Cor- names. Cora and Corinne belong to the Greek family associated with kore, “maiden.” Cornelia has a different history as the feminine form of the Roman family name Cornelius, whose deeper meaning is uncertain.

In Dutch, Corrie is an established familiar form of Cornelia. In English it also became a feminine counterpart to Corey, adding another route into use. Cori and Corie are related English spellings, while Corry occurs in Dutch.

English usually pronounces Corrie KOR-ee, with stress on the first syllable. Dutch also has two syllables, approximately KOR-ee, but the r follows Dutch pronunciation rather than the usual English r. The short ending gives the same familiar shape to names whose older histories are quite different.

A Scottish landscape name

The Scottish surname comes from Gaelic coire, meaning “cauldron,” used for a rounded hollow in a mountainside. The same landscape word appears in English as corrie and corresponds to the geographical term cirque.

Corrie is also the name of a village on the Isle of Arran. The surname developed from places bearing this kind of name, and it has occasionally passed into masculine first-name use. This Scottish route accounts for a landscape meaning alongside the better-known nickname uses.

Corrie ten Boom

Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom was born in Amsterdam in 1892 and grew up in Haarlem, where her family ran a watch shop. She became a licensed watchmaker at a time when few Dutch women worked in that profession.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, the family home and shop became part of a resistance network. Corrie helped arrange hiding places and ration books for Jewish people. Her family's rescue work was rooted in their Christian convictions.

The authorities raided the house on February 28, 1944. Six people concealed in its hiding place escaped discovery and were later moved to safety. Corrie was imprisoned and eventually deported to Ravensbrück, where her sister Betsie died. Corrie survived and was released late in 1944.

Yad Vashem recognized her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1967. Her memoir The Hiding Place appeared in 1971 and was adapted into a film in 1975. The family's Haarlem home became a museum, preserving the setting behind her story.

American usage

Both sexes reached their largest published annual counts for Corrie in the United States in 1977: 333 girls, ranked #540, and 53 boys. In 2025, 33 girls and five boys received the exact spelling. Female use has been much more numerous in the American series.

How popular is Corrie?

In 2025, Corrie ranked #4,281 among girls in the United States, with 33 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 333 in 1977. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.