Jennefer
A feminine form of the Welsh name Jennifer, meaning "white fair one".
Name Census estimates that about 1,375 living Americans carry the first name Jennefer. The name is used almost exclusively for girls. The average person named Jennefer today is around 44 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Jennefer births was 1972 (61 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Jennefer. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
People living today
1.4K
~ 1 in 249,276 Americans
Peak year
1972
61 babies that year
Average age
44
years old
2010 SSA rank
#18,217
Tracked since 1950
Popularity
Jennefer: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Jennefer from the 1950s through to the 2010s, spanning 7 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1970s, with 523 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1970s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Jennefer by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Jennefer during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Jennefers live
The SSA's state-level files cover 10 states and territories. California, New York, Texas recorded the most babies named Jennefer, while Missouri, Massachusetts, Michigan recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 45 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Jennefer
The name Jennefer is a variant spelling of the name Jennifer, which is an English feminine form of the name Guinevere. Guinevere is derived from the Welsh name Gwenhwyfar, which means "fair phantom" or "fair smooth awn." The name originated in the medieval tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Jennifer rose to popularity in the 16th century, with records showing it was used in the English counties of Cornwall and Devon. The earliest known bearer of the name was Jennifer Wriothesley, who lived in the late 16th century and was the wife of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton.
In the 17th century, a Jennifer Vavasor was recorded as living in Yorkshire, England. Another early bearer was Jennifer Pedley, who was born in 1693 in Redditch, Worcestershire.
The name gained wider popularity in the 19th century, with notable bearers including Jennifer Ramsbottom (1816-1894), a British philanthropist, and Jennifer Royle (1871-1939), an English artist and illustrator.
One of the most famous Jennifers in history was Jennifer Jones (1919-2009), an American actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1943 film The Song of Bernadette. Other notable Jennifers include Jennifer Capriati (born 1976), an American professional tennis player and former World No. 1, and Jennifer Aniston (born 1969), an American actress best known for her role as Rachel Green on the sitcom Friends.
The variant spelling Jennefer emerged as a rarer form of the name, though it shares the same origins and meanings as Jennifer. It is worth noting that the name Jennefer is not as widely used as Jennifer, and there are fewer historical records or famous bearers of this particular spelling variant.
People
Jennefer + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Jennefer as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with J
Other first names starting with J with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Jennefer: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Jennefer?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 1,375 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Jennefer going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 249,276 US residents.
Is Jennefer a common name?
We classify Jennefer as "Rare". It ranks above 92% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 1,498 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Jennefer most popular?
The single biggest year for Jennefer was 1972, when 61 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Jennefer is about 44 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
Is Jennefer a female name?
Yes, 100.0% of people registered as Jennefer in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.