Jennifer

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Jennifer boys named Jennifer

By the numbers

Total US births

1,476,540

Estimated living today

1.4 million

Median age today

46

Peak year

1972

Best rank

1st

Rank in 2025

586th

First recorded

1919

Girls / boys

1,471,703 / 4,837

How old the living Jennifers are

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,476,540 babies given the name since 1919, about 1.4 million are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 26,000 of them are children and 48,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Cornish

From Cornish Gweniver, from cnx Gwynnever (cognate with Welsh Gwenhwyfar), from cel-bry-pro *Gwɨnnohuɨβar. Compare Irish Fionnabhair, which may be cognate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Jennifers

• Jennifer Lopez (born 1969)American singer and actress
• Jennifer Aniston (born 1969)American actress
• Jennifer Lawrence (born 1990)American actress and producer
• Jennifer Connelly (born 1970)American actress
• Jennifer Garner (born 1972)American actress
• Jennifer Doudna (born 1964)American biochemist
• Jennifer Hudson (born 1981)American singer, actress, model and spokesperson
• Jennifer Love Hewitt (born 1979)American actress and singer

People named Jennifer with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Jennifer is most common

• CA176,336
• NY112,465
• TX100,134
• IL77,341
• OH75,254
• PA73,145
• MI60,620
• FL54,842
• NJ47,650
• MA41,024

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jennifer is most concentrated in New Hampshire (1.4×), Alaska (1.4×), Delaware (1.3×), Wyoming (1.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1972

The most popular girls’ names the year Jennifer peaked:

• Jennifer
• Michelle
• Lisa
• Kimberly
• Amy
• Angela

All the names of 1972

Jennifer elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Jennifer: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Jennifer is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.12% of children were given it – 73 of them.

Jennifer: rank by region

In 2023, Jennifer was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2025, Jennifer was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Jennifer by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Jennifer among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Jennifer lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 20,371 women called Jennifer were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Jenna
• Jennie
• Jenny
• Jenifer
• Jensen
• Jena
• Jenelle
• Jenesis
• Jenni
• Jennings
• Jeniffer
• Jennette

Jennifer against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Jennifer vs Jenna
• Jennifer vs Jennie
• Jennifer vs Jenny
• Jennifer vs Jenifer
• Jennifer vs Jensen
• Jennifer vs Jena

Compare Jennifer with a name of your own