Jennifer

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Jennifer is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'.

rarermore common
  • CACanada1 in 236◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 243
  • USUnited States1 in 250

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.6M ●

across 12 countries

#109 ●

of 16M given names

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
609 ●

15M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 250 ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

JenniferLatin · English●16M records
ג'ניפרHebrew · Hebrew●5.1K records
জেনিফারBengali · Bangla●20 records
제니퍼Hangul · Korean●11 records

Locally spelled ג'ניפר in FR France, IL Israel.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'.

Sources 1

  • Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Jennifer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#201,330,10013M rec.1 in 2501.3MJennifer609
GB United Kingdom#36824,115725K rec.—3Jennifer304
AU Australia#29476,693323K rec.—88Jennifer299
CA Canada#20351,851320K rec.—9Jennifer295
PH Philippines#32300,707269K rec.——Jennifer174
DE Germany#144181,492167K rec.—1Jennifer261
IT Italy#10378,85871K rec.—76Jennifer177
BR Brazil—76,540△158 rec.1 in 2.8K89KJennifer10
FR France—65,480△263 rec.1 in 1K65Kג'ניפר15
EC Ecuador#26239,139△1.3K rec.1 in 43239KJennifer63
AT Austria#9735,0239.2K rec.—7.7KJennifer129
IE Ireland#2533,72029K rec.——Jennifer148

Roughly 1.3M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 250). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English16M74%
  • Spanish1.3M6%
  • 1.2M5%
  • French622K3%
  • Portuguese595K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English16,282,78274%
Spanish1,274,6836%
1,183,9785%
French621,6013%
Portuguese594,9663%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Jennifer is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name2.8M records spelled Jennifer40 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Jënnïfër, Jénnifer, J'Ennifer, Jënnifër, Jennïfer

  • a separate given name1.3M records spelled Jennifer2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy

    Also written Jénnifer

  • Polish given name84K records spelled Jennifer39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Russian

    Also written Дженнифер, Dženifer, Йеннифер, Еннифер, Джэніфэр

  • Indonesian given name53K records spelled Jennifer4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written 'Jennifer

  • Hungarian given name31K records spelled Jennifer5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Hungary, Finland, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Jënnïfër, Jënnifër

  • Thai given name27K records spelled Jennifer21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Thailand, Laos, Philippines

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written เจนนิเฟอร์, Jannifer, เจนนีเฟอร์, เจนนี่เฟอร์, เจ็นนิเฟอร์

86 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Jennifer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Cornish form of Guinevere; ‘white wave’.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • It means ‘white wave’. The Cornish form of Guinevere, wife of King Arthur. It is frequently bestowed in Ireland today. Jeremiah [/rimias] (m) Hebrew, ‘may God exalt’. The name of an Old Testament prophet, used in Ireland to anglicise Dermot. It was once frequently used but it is now much rarer.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In English, A female given name from Cornish, Middle Cornish, or Proto-Brittonic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, from Welsh Gwenhwyvar, from gwen ‘fair, white’ and (g)wyf ‘smooth, yielding’; first attested Mabilia Jeneuer 1296 SRSx

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In French, Celtic name linked to « white/fair ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

020K40K60K80K19201940196019802000202064K · 1972

Show as table
Jennifer in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1919–2025
Yearrecords
19196
19207
19215
19227
19239
192411
19259
19269
19275
19287
192917
193017
193126
193225
193330
193441
193536
193642
193738
193851
193962
1940102
1941136
1942198
1943337
1944684
1945985
19461,733
19472,010
19481,882
19492,618
19502,802
19512,973
19523,527
19533,375
19543,966
19554,123
19564,711
19575,483
19585,882
19596,233
19607,243
19619,265
196210,977
196311,757
196412,955
196515,207
196618,215
196718,236
196826,853
196933,705
197046,150
197156,771
197263,600
197362,448
197463,107
197558,190
197659,473
197758,964
197856,314
197956,712
198058,374
198157,046
198257,120
198354,353
198450,564
198542,661
198636,187
198732,710
198827,893
198924,006
199022,236
199120,673
199217,819
199315,749
199414,001
199512,683
199611,732
199711,840
199810,692
199910,616
20009,390
20018,923
20028,540
20037,569
20046,545
20055,837
20065,268
20074,653
20083,797
20092,987
20102,622
20112,281
20121,928
20131,692
20141,521
20151,286
20161,162
20171,052
2018921
2019788
2020713
2021638
2022630
2023586
2024556
2025501

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 107 years between 1919–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

196019802000Jennifer Coolidge, b. 1961Jennifer Aniston, b. 1969Jennifer Connelly, b. 1970Jennifer Garner, b. 1972Jennifer Capriati, b. 1976Ginnifer Goodwin, b. 1978Jen Psaki, b. 1978Jennifer Morrison, b. 1979Jennifer Lawrence, b. 1990Jennifer Stone, b. 1993

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 127 sources across 70 countries.

Official registers attesting Jennifer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.3M#14
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202465K#2,068
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202240K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—40K#670
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202439K#42
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—27K#1,173
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—20K#341
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—20K#190
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—13K#330
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20209.8K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—8K#83
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—7.9K#479

Reference works 5

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 1,688 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Jennifer?
We estimate roughly 1.6 million people bear Jennifer (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Jennifer have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.3 million people bear Jennifer in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled jennifer.
How common is Jennifer compared with other names?
In the United States, Jennifer is the 20th most common given name of 3,122,706 given names recorded there.
Is Jennifer a male or female name?
Jennifer is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Jennifer mean?
Recorded meaning: Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jennifer

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Jennifer” — the 20th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Jennifer parses inside a full name →