Humanverse

Perl

About 701 American babies have been named Perl since 1883, most of them around 2023. In 2025 it ranked 4,352nd. About 610 Perls are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 11.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Perl boys named Perl

By the numbers

Total US births
701
Estimated living today
610
Median age today
11
Peak year
2023
Best rank
4,114th
Rank in 2025
4,352nd
First recorded
1883
Girls / boys
616 / 85

How old the living Perls are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 701 babies given the name since 1883, about 610 are alive — 86 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 Perl is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Perl is most concentrated in New York (12.8×).

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

Names of 2023

The most popular girls’ names the year Perl peaked:

All the names of 2023

Perl elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Perl 13 4,763rd
France girls Perl 5 4,244th

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

Perl against another name

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

Compare Perl 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.