And yes, I've heard the Pearl claim before. As well as the claim that the original acronym was going to be Practical Extraction And Reporting Language.

All of the claims that I have heard fit together if you assume that the actual sequence of events was this. Larry wanted to name it pearl for whatever combination of reasons. Came up with a nice acronym for it. Decided not to name it pearl for whatever combinations of reasons. Was playing around and came up with the Perfectly Eclectic Rubbish Lister. Preferred that over pearl for various reasons (not in use, greppable, likes puns, etc). And therefore named the language perl. Therefore the language name is not an acronym, but both popular backronyms predate the actual language name.

I was not present. But this is my best guess as to what did happen.