Humanverse

Pearly

The girl's name Pearly has been in the national records since 1884, with 1,897 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 2022. About 560 Pearlys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 76.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 15 30 45 60 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Pearly boys named Pearly

Girls and boys called Pearly

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,689 girls and 208 boys in all, and in 1952 the split was 24 to 9.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 34 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
1,897
Estimated living today
560
Median age today
76
Peak year
1924
Best rank
1,069th
Rank in 2025
unranked
First recorded
1884
Girls / boys
1,689 / 208

How old the living Pearlys are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,897 babies given the name since 1884, about 560 are alive — 30 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1949 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 Pearly is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Pearly is most concentrated in Louisiana (26.1×), Mississippi (8.2×), South Carolina (5.3×), North Carolina (3.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1924

The most popular girls’ names the year Pearly peaked:

All the names of 1924

Pearly elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Pearly 17 3,333rd
France girls Pearly 5 7,873rd

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.

Related names

Pearly against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Pearly with a name of your own

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.