English word-name from the writing feather, associated with literacy and literary tradition.
Quill descends from the Middle Low German "quiele" or Middle Dutch "quiele," referring to the hollow shaft of a feather — the instrument that carried human thought onto parchment for a millennium before the steel nib arrived. In that single object, the quill concentrates the whole romantic ideal of the writer: ink-stained fingers, candlelight, and the scratch of goose feather against vellum. As a word it entered English in the fifteenth century, and its literary associations have never dimmed.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote with one, as did William Shakespeare, and the quill remains the universal symbol of authorship — still a standard icon for writing apps and publishing houses today. As a given name, Quill gained a significant pop-culture boost when Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" introduced Peter Quill as its irreverent, mixtape-loving space adventurer, making the name feel at once roguish and warmhearted. But Quill as a standalone name predates Star-Lord: it has appeared in American records as a surname-turned-given-name since the nineteenth century, likely from Irish families bearing the anglicized form of Ó Cuill.
The name also brushes up against Quinn, which shares Celtic roots and some of the same bright vowel energy. Short, punchy, and image-rich, Quill suits a child whose parents want a name that evokes creativity and a certain quiet sharpness — it is, after all, also the weapon of a porcupine.