Humanverse

Jenesis vs Jennifer

American parents have registered 1,476,540 Jennifers since 1880, against 6,083 Jenesises. Jennifer is still ahead, with 501 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jenesis Jennifer

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 2023, when Jenesis had 491 and Jennifer had 586.

Side by side

  Jenesis Jennifer
Total US births 6,0831,476,540
Most in one year 49163,790
Babies in 2025 356501
Estimated living today 6,0001.4 million
Median age today 746
Peak year 20231972
Best rank 651st girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 816th586th
First recorded 19821919
Girls / boys 5,743 / 3401,471,703 / 4,837

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.

Which name is older

Half of the Jennifers alive today are over 46; half the Jenesises are over 7. That is 39 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Jenesis Jennifer
France 565,495
England and Wales 1411,588

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: Jenesis and Jennifer.