Jennifer

The name is a Cornish adaptation of the Welsh Gwenhwyfar, sharing an etymological root with Guinevere. George Bernard Shaw helped popularize it outside western Britain by giving it to a lead character in his 1906 play The Doctor's Dilemma. American registrars first recorded it in 1919, after which it accumulated slowly before sweeping the country in the 1970s.

A Jennifer tends to be pictured with a high school graduation year between 1986 and 1998. The name carries the memory of thirty-student classrooms where calling roll required a clarifying last initial. With the estimated average age around forty-six today, the name reads less like a playground shout and more like the signature on a mortgage approval. It remains difficult to walk through an American office park without encountering at least two.