The name Pearl comes from the English word ‘pearl’, ultimately from Latin ‘perla’. It has been used as a given name in the English-speaking world since the 19th century, just like gemstone names such as Emerald and Jade.
Pearl is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Pearl isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Pearl ranks 622. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 3 were named Pearl. In the entire USA, approximately 103,653 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Pearl. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
The name Pearl comes from the English word ‘pearl’, ultimately from Latin ‘perla’. It has been used as a given name in the English-speaking world since the 19th century, just like gemstone names such as Emerald and Jade.
Pearl was very... popular around 1890 and was even given to boys. During the 20th century, it became a rare name.
Pearl is the epitome of endurance. Every year since first names have been registered in the United States, parents have come up with the idea of naming their daughter Pearl. This means that several girls named Pearl have witnessed historic events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Pearl has reached its highest rank of 22 numerous times, but that was long ago before the beginning of the last century, last time in 1890. Nevertheless, the name has been in the top 100 repeatedly. This makes Pearl one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Pearl was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Pearl will be Pearl. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Pearl in 2022 – in fact 380 to be precise, confirming Pearl is still a popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #695 among all girls‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 1994, when only 124 baby girls were named Pearl.
Everyone knows her, everyone loves her and still she’s different from the mainstream: Pearl occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Pearl is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Pearl is not one of those names that one encounters in every neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, is noticeable and special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 102,546 women and girls of all generations bear the name Pearl – that is one in 1,503. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in North Dakota, where one in 605 women and girls is called Pearl, while it is particularly rare in Nevada, where you have to ask an average of 22,334 women for their name to get Pearl as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter P is quite rare as an initial letter for girls' names: only 1.6% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a P, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, P is by no means the rarest initial. While A, S and M are the most common first letters of girls' names, Q, X and U are the least common initials of feminine first names.
With five letters, the name Pearl is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.6% of all girls’ names begin with a P, this initial occurs less than half as often as the other letters on average. By the way, of the comparatively few girls' names that begin with a P, Patricia is currently the most common.
If your name is Pearl and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Pearl, you can simply say:
Pig
Elephant
Apple
Rocket
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Pearl
Pearl
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
P
E
A
R
L
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
P
E
A
R
L
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Pearl sounds like this:
