Pearl
The girl's name Pearl has been in the national records since 1880, with 163,010 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 776th. About 27,000 Pearls are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Pearl boys named Pearl
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 163,010
- Estimated living today
- 27,000
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 56th
- Rank in 2025
- 776th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 159,088 / 3,922
How old the living Pearls are
born that year still alive today
Of the 163,010 babies given the name since 1880, about 27,000 are alive — 17 in every hundred. Roughly 6,800 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Pearls
- Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)American writer
- Pearl Bailey (1918–1990)American actress and singer
- Pearl Mackie (born 1987)British actress
- Pearl White (1892–1938)American actress
- Pearl Thusi (born 1988)South African actress
- Pearl Argyle (1910–1947)South African ballet dancer and actor
People named Pearl with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Pearl is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Pearl is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.4×), West Virginia (2.2×), South Carolina (2.0×), Hawaii (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Pearl peaked:
Pearl elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Pearl | 3,696 | 221st |
| France girls | Pearl | 540 | 1,634th |
| Ireland girls | Pearl | 451 | 215th |
| Scotland girls | Pearl | 71 | 351st |
| Northern Ireland girls | Pearl | 19 | 253rd |
| Belgium girls | Pearl | 10 | 1,159th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Pearl by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Pearl among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Pearl | 10 | 28 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Pearl against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.