Entry № 2156 · English origin

Coretta Coretta — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ koh-RET-tah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
English
Meaning
"Maiden (Coretta Scott King, civil rights leader)"
Syllables
3
First recorded
Modern (English)

A name that means "maiden (coretta scott king, civil rights leader)".

Coretta is an English elaboration of Cora, from the Greek korē (maiden). Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) — wife of Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leader in her own right who continued her husband's work after his 1968 assassination. Founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta (1968); led the successful 15-year campaign to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a US federal holiday (signed into law 1983); spoke out early against apartheid, the Vietnam War, and LGBTQ discrimination.

Subject of Octavia Vivian's Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King (2006).

Maiden. Led the 15-year campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a US federal holiday.

The name in its native script.

Coretta
Transliteration
Coretta
Pronunciation
/ kəˈrɛt.ə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Coretta stands.

Coretta does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Corettas before her.

Real people
Coretta Scott King
American civil rights leader.
1927 – 2006
In fiction
Coretta
Coretta Scott King Book Award namesake.
1969

Names connected to Coretta.

The number behind Coretta.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Coretta reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.