Humanverse

Jennifer vs Jenniffer

American parents have registered 1,476,540 Jennifers since 1880, against 2,878 Jenniffers. Jennifer is still ahead, with 501 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jennifer Jenniffer

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

Jennifer has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1919 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1953, when Jennifer had 3,383 and Jenniffer had 16.

Side by side

  Jennifer Jenniffer
Total US births 1,476,5402,878
Most in one year 63,790125
Babies in 2025 501under 5
Estimated living today 1.4 million2,700
Median age today 4645
Peak year 19721972
Best rank 1st girls967th girls
Rank in 2025 586thunranked
First recorded 19191947
Girls / boys 1,471,703 / 4,8372,878 / 0

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 Jennifer Jenniffer
France 65,4955
Scotland 15,3893

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: Jennifer and Jenniffer.