[3] Pearl came into wider popular use in the Anglosphere along with other gemstone names used for girls during the late Victorian Era.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, heroine Hester Prynne names her illegitimate daughter Pearl because the child is "of great price, purchased with all she had, her mother's only treasure."

[10] It has again increased in usage in Canada and ranked among the top five hundred names for newborn girls there in 2023.

[12] Authors Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz noted in their 2007 book The Baby Name Bible that Pearl is in fashion again with hipster parents in the United States.

[8] The American Western author Zane Grey may have been given his little-used first name of Pearl in 1872 in reference to a newspaper article that described Queen Victoria's mourning dress as "pearl grey".

[13] American strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff was given the name in the 1870s because his mother had wanted a girl.