Pluma is an unusual, literary-sounding name that may also have botanical and feather-related roots.
Thanks to Alexandra for suggesting Pluma as our Baby Name of the Day.
Before diving into history and meaning, consider a larger point: names like Pluma are becoming rarer. Modern names coined since the 1960s or 1970s are usually traceable through media, advertising, or celebrity culture. Those origins are often easy to document. Pluma, however, behaves like a name from an earlier era — one that appears in historical records and then largely vanishes.
Pluma appears intermittently in US records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1884, ten baby girls were recorded with the name; there were 18 in 1904 and 22 in 1917. In some of those years that number was enough to place Pluma on the US Top 1000 list. After mid-century the counts decline: 1951 is the last year when five girls received the name, and in subsequent years the number of births recorded with Pluma drops to fewer than five annually, sometimes to none.
Researchers and name enthusiasts have found isolated traces — for example, a gravestone in Connecticut bearing the name — but overall Pluma remains elusive. The most convincing etymology ties the name to the Latin word for feather. English words like plume and plumage come from that root, and Spanish retains the form pluma (meaning feather or pen). Plumas County in California, for instance, takes its name from the Feather River — Rio de las Plumas.
Feathers were once prominent decorative elements and practical tools. Quill pens remained in use into the nineteenth century, and the French word plume still means “pen,” as in the phrase nom de plume. This connection places Pluma among literary and word-inspired names such as Novella and Fable — names that evoke writing or storytelling as well as a lyrical sensibility.
Pluma can also be read as an ornamental name in the tradition of Pearl or Rose. Feathered trims and hat plumes were fashionable accessories for decades, giving rise to idioms like “a feather in my cap.” As a given name, Pluma might have been chosen for its delicate, decorative connotations.
Other related names appear in historical records: Plumie and Bluma. Plumie suggests the same feather association, and names often cluster around shared roots or sounds. Just as Madeline, Madison, and Madalyn coexist in naming trends, Pluma and Plumie may have been part of a small cluster. Records also show occasional spellings like Plumma.
Bluma, by contrast, is a Yiddish name meaning “flower” (related to bloom). The similarity in sound makes it plausible that Bluma and Pluma could be conflated in some contexts, but Pluma is not merely a transcription error; multiple distinct references to Pluma appear in historical documents, including examples such as Pluma Fidelia.
There is also an Irish element to consider: the Irish word pluma can mean plum. The short name Plum has reappeared in modern times as a bold middle name choice, and that fruit-related meaning might have influenced some usage or been a coincidental parallel.
Though Pluma faded from common use, feather-inspired names have not disappeared entirely. For example, eleven girls were registered with the name Feather in 2012. Still, Pluma itself remains rare — an antique-sounding option with a faint, fragmentary trail in American naming history.
Most likely Pluma originated as a fanciful borrowing from the word for feather, enjoying a brief period of fashionable use before slipping into obscurity. It has the quiet charm of a name with literary undertones and decorative imagery, but lacks an obvious cultural touchstone — no famous poem or popular character seems to have kept it in circulation. Today Pluma would be an uncommon, distinctive choice for parents seeking an old-fashioned name with elegant, feathered associations.