Corin is linked to Greek-rooted names like Corinna and is often interpreted as meaning "maiden" or "girl."
Corin is a name touched by pastoral poetry and ancient Roman religion in equal measure. Its most traceable thread runs through the Latin Quirinus, one of Rome's oldest deities — a god associated with the Sabine people and later identified with the deified Romulus, founder of Rome. The Quirinal Hill, one of Rome's seven hills, takes its name from the same root, and Roman citizens were sometimes called Quirites in a civic sense.
From Quirinus the name gradually softened through Romance languages into forms like Corin and Coryn. Shakespeare gave the name its most beloved English outing in As You Like It (c. 1599), where Corin is an old, wise shepherd in the Forest of Arden — gentle, philosophical, content with humble pastoral life.
He delivers one of the play's most quietly beautiful speeches about the nature of simple virtue: "I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends." This Shakespearean shepherd made Corin a name synonymous with thoughtful rural grace in the English literary imagination. Corin also resonates with the classical lyric tradition through Corinna, the name of Ovid's beloved in the Amores and of an actual ancient Boeotian poetess who reputedly defeated Pindar in competition.
The masculine Corin carries that same classical elegance without the weight of overuse. In the twentieth century, Corin Redgrave — the British actor and political activist, brother of Vanessa — gave the name a distinguished modern face. Today Corin suits parents drawn to Shakespearean heritage and classical roots, a name both literary and quietly daring.