Cordelia is a feminine given name. It was borne by the tragic heroine of Shakespeare's King Lear (1606), a character based on the legendary queen Cordelia. The name is of uncertain origin. It is popularly associated with Latin (genitive ) "heart", and has also been linked with the Welsh name Creiddylad, allegedly meaning "jewel of the sea", but it may derive from the French coeur de lion "heart of a lion".
Notable people with the name
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Cordelia of Britain, legendary queen of the Britons, youngest daughter of King Leir
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Cordelia Agbebaku (1961–2017), Nigerian academic and former vice-chancellor of Ambrose Alli University
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Cordelia Botkin (1854–1910), American murderer
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Cordelia Bugeja (born 1976), British actress
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Cordelia Cameron, Australian actor-manager
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Cordelia Camp, American educator
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Cordelia Candelaria (born 1943), American educator and writer
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Cordelia Throop Cole (1833–1900), American social reformer
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Cordelia Elizabeth Cook (1919–1996), American combat nurse
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Cordelia Adams Crawford (1865–1943), American pioneer and healer
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Cordelia Edvardson (1929–2012), German-born Swedish journalist, author and Holocaust survivor
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Cordelia Fine (born 1975), British academic psychologist and writer
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Cordelia Agnes Greene (1831–1905), physician, philanthropist and suffragist from Upstate New York
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Cordelia Griffith (born 1995), English cricketer
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Cordelia Gundolf (1917–2008), German academic and educator
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Cordelia Harvey (1824–1895), First Lady of Wisconsin Governor Louis Harvey, known for founding Civil War Orphans' homes and advocating for war field hospital conditions
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Cordelia Hawkins, eponym of the U.S. town of Cordele, Georgia
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Cordelia Hood (1913–2011), American counter-intelligence agent
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Cordelia Howard (1848–1941), American child actress
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Cordelia James, Baroness James of Rusholme (1912–2007), British educator and justice of the peace
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Cordelia Knott (1890–1974), wife of Walter Knott and founder of Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knott's Berry Farm
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Cordelia Scaife May (1928–2005), American heiress and philanthropist
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Cordelia Mendoza, American antiquarian and appraiser
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Cordelia Oliver (1923–2009), Scottish journalist, painter and art critic
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Cordelia Schmid (born 1967), German computer vision researcher
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Cordelia Stanwood (1865–1958), American ornithologist, wildlife photographer, artisan and writer
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Cordelia Strube (born 1960), Canadian playwright and novelist
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Cordelia Urueta (1908–1995), Mexican artist
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Cordelia Wege (born 1976), German actress
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Cordelia Wilson (1873–1953), American painter of New Mexico and American Southwest landscapes
Fictional characters
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Cordelia (King Lear), a central character in William Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear
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Cordelia, the character who is the object of seduction in Kierkegaard's The Seducer's Diary (a long section in his book Either/Or)
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Cordelia, the main character of the eponymous Dutch adult comic strip by Belgian cartoonist "ILAH" (Inge Heremans)
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Cordelia, character in James Lapine and William Finn's 1990 off-Broadway musical Falsettoland and later its two Broadway revivals, renamed Falsettos
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Cordelia Frost, character in MARVEL's "Emma Frost" comics, Emma's sister
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Cordelia, wife of Dan Mulligan in a series of musicals written and produced by Edward Harrigan
Anime
Films and television shows
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Cordelia, the titular character in the silent film Cordelia the Magnificent
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Cordelia Abbott, in the television soap opera The Young and The Restless
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Cordelia Chase, in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
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Cordelia Cupp, in the mystery television series The Residence
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, character in
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Cordelia "Cody" Latimer, character in the New Zealand comedy-drama series Go Girls.
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Cordelia Winthrop Scott, from the 2011 film Monte Carlo, played by Selena Gomez
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Cordelia Thornberry, in The Wild Thornberrys
Literature
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In Kierkegaard's Either/Or in the section of Diary of a Seducer
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In Anne of Green Gables, Anne requests that she be called Cordelia rather than Anne
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Cordelia Blake, title character of the Winston Graham novel Cordelia (1949)
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Cordelia Flakk, in Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book
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Lady Cordelia Flyte, in Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh
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Cordelia Geard, in John Cowper Powys's novel A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
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Cordelia Gray, in two books by P.D. James
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Cordelia Kenn, in Aidan Chambers' novel (2005)
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Cordelia Ransom, in the Honorverse novels by David Weber
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The main character of the short story "Cordelia the Crude" by Wallace Thurman
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Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan in the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
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Cordelia Carstairs, protagonist of The Last Hours series by Cassandra Clare
Video games
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Cordelia, a playable character in Fire Emblem Awakening
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Cordelia, final boss in Panel de Pon
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Cordelia, youngest daughter of King Regna, in Triangle Strategy