科拉

The female name Cora is rendered in Chinese as 科拉. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Cora is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Kē lā.

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Cora is written with 2 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 科 (Kē), 拉 (lā). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Cora rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Cora

Cora is a name of Greek origin. From the Greek Kore, "maiden" — an epithet of Persephone before she became queen of the underworld.