Jennifer
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒɛnɪfə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jennifer is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the United States it is the 17th most common given name.
- IEIreland≈1 in 199(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 204
- CNChina≈1 in 211
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #58 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 679 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 199 (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,600,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Jennifer, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jennifer counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈6,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 211 | — | Jennifer | 98 |
| US United States | #17 | 1,331,077 | 1 in 250 | 1.3M | Jennifer | 679 |
| PH Philippines | #31 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 340 | — | Jennifer | 190 |
| GB United Kingdom | #37 | ≈290,000 est. | ≈1 in 223 | 3 | Jennifer | 397 |
| CA Canada | #17 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 204 | 9 | Jennifer | 390 |
| IE Ireland | #20 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 199 | — | Jennifer | 160 |
| NZ New Zealand | #30 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 222 | 11 | Jennifer | 176 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jennifer Coolidgeb. 1961USAmerican actress (born 1961)
- Jennifer Anistonb. 1969USAmerican actress (born 1969)
- Jennifer Connellyb. 1970USAmerican actress (born 1970)
- Jennifer Garnerb. 1972USAmerican actress
- Jennifer Capriatib. 1976USAmerican tennis player
- Ginnifer Goodwinb. 1978USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Jen Psakib. 1978USnot in their usual nameWhite House Press Secretary from 2021 to 2022
- Jennifer Morrisonb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Jennifer Lawrenceb. 1990USAmerican actress and producer (born 1990)
- Jennifer Stoneb. 1993USAmerican actress and registered nurse (born 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 129 sources across 70 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3M | #14 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 977 | #14 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 501 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 40 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 9 | #474 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 1994 | 7 | — |
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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Jennifer mean, and where does it come from?
- Welsh form of Guinevere, from Celtic gwen, 'white, fair'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- What are other forms of the name Jennifer?
- In the etymology graph, Jenny, Jennie and Jenna are forms of the same name in other languages; Jen, Jenn and Jenae are recorded short or pet forms.
- How common is the name Jennifer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,331,077 people named Jennifer in 2020, about 1 in 250 residents.
- How common is Jennifer compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jennifer is the 17th most common given name of 2,815,431 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.
- In which country does Jennifer have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.6 million people named Jennifer in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jennifer.
- How do you pronounce Jennifer?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɛnɪfə/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Jennifer?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jenniferThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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 17th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.