Cordelia has uncertain origins — possibly from the Latin cor (heart) and delia (of the sea), giving "heart of the sea." It may also derive from a Celtic root cordila, meaning "daughter of the sea." The character Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, the youngest and truest daughter, made the name famous.
Cordelia is rising sharply in the 2020s. It now sits in the U.S. top 400 and is climbing — a long classical literary name returning to use, particularly with the broader return of Shakespearean and Anne of Green Gables names (Anne, Diana, Marilla).
Cordelia 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.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Cordelia reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.