Humanverse

Jenne vs Jennifer

American parents have registered 1,476,540 Jennifers since 1880, against 569 Jennes. Jennifer is still ahead, with 501 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jenne against Jennifer, 1880 to 2025 0 20k 40k 60k 80k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jenne Jennifer

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 110 years in which either name was published, Jennifer for 106 years and Jenne for 4 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Jenne Jennifer
Total US births 5691,476,540
Most in one year 2063,790
Babies in 2025 under 5501
Estimated living today 4901.4 million
Median age today 4646
Peak year 19731972
Best rank 3,233rd girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked586th
First recorded 19131919
Girls / boys 569 / 01,471,703 / 4,837

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jenne Jennifer
Belgium 2101,240

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jenne and Jennifer.