Variant of Pearl, from Latin 'perla,' a precious gem symbolizing purity.
Perl is a variant of Pearl, the gemstone name that rose to extraordinary popularity during the Victorian era, when nature-derived names — Violet, Ivy, Ruby, Flora — flooded the naming landscape as a reaction against heavily classical convention. The pearl itself carried layers of symbolism: purity, rarity, the beautiful result of patient suffering, and in Christian iconography, the kingdom of heaven itself ('the pearl of great price'). As a name, Pearl captured all of that in two syllables.
The most haunting literary Pearl is undoubtedly the daughter born to Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter — a child described as the living embodiment of her mother's transgression and love simultaneously, named for the pearl-like gem that seemed to have been bought at great price. Pearl Bailey, the beloved American singer and actress, brought the name warmth and showbiz glamour in the mid-twentieth century. The variant Perl has a spare, older-world quality, closer to the name's Yiddish form 'Perle,' which was common in Ashkenazi Jewish communities throughout Eastern Europe.
Today Perl carries gentle irony for the technically minded — it shares its name with the programming language created by Larry Wall in 1987. But for most, it remains a jewel-name of quiet vintage charm, more intimate and slightly more unusual than the standard Pearl spelling.
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