Korben is a modern spelling of Corbin, from a French surname meaning “raven.”
Korben occupies a fascinating dual position in naming history: it is simultaneously a variant of an ancient surname with medieval European roots and a pop culture artifact of late twentieth-century cinema. The surname Corbin derives from the Old French "corbeau" or Latin "corvus," meaning raven — the bird associated across European folklore with intelligence, prophecy, and the liminal space between worlds. Ravens appear in Norse mythology attending Odin, in Celtic legend as omens of battle, and in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem as an emblem of inexorable loss.
The raven surname Corbin was carried by French settlers into England and eventually the New World. The specific spelling Korben was catapulted into cultural consciousness by Luc Besson's 1997 science fiction film "The Fifth Element," in which Bruce Willis played the cab driver and reluctant hero Korben Dallas. Besson's films have always had a playful relationship with nomenclature — the female lead in the film was named Leeloo, hardly a traditional choice — and Korben Dallas had the quality of a name simultaneously futuristic and earthily blue-collar, suggesting a twenty-third century where surnames like Dallas have become first names and old names like Korben have been respelled with a more angular, kinetic orthography.
The film's enduring cult status has kept the name circulating. For parents today, Korben offers the warmth of the Corbin/Corbett family of names — grounded, strong, with that ancient raven symbolism — in a spelling that feels slightly more contemporary and distinctly cinematic. It reads as masculine without being aggressive, unusual without being unpronounceable, and carries just enough pop culture DNA to suggest a parent with good taste in films.