Behind the Name

I posted more than a week ago, about my full (married) name being so common. It's a combination of a very, very common name and a common Filipino family name.

I remember asking my mother how or why I was named "Jennifer", she said because during that time, there was a song titled "Jennifer". The other reason was that it was after their names, Fe and Fernando (FER in my name), and she was called "Nene" (that is for the NI in my name) during her childhood years.

I searched wikipedia, and here's the info I found:

Jennifer is a female given name; it became a common first name for females in English-speaking countries during the 20th century. The name Jennifer is a Cornish variant of Guinevere, which is a Norman-derived Middle English form of the Old Welsh Gwenhwyfar (gwen: white, fair + hwyfar: smooth, soft). Despite the name's similarity to the Old English words jenefer, genefer and jinifer, which were all variants of Juniper and used to describe the juniper tree, there is no evidence that it was derived from these.

The name has been in use since the 18th century. Before 1906 the name was fairly uncommon, but it became popular after George Bernard Shaw used it for the main female character in The Doctor's Dilemma.[citation needed] It gained even more popularity in the 1970s. Though its popularity is often attributed to the novel and film Love Story,[citation needed] Jennifer was already the number 3 name given to baby girls in the United States in 1969, the year before the book and movie were released. Jennifer was the single most popular name for American girls from 1970 to 1984. It is also popular for Hispanic females. Since the early 1990s it has remained common, but considerably less so. Diminutives include Jen (Jenn), Jenny (Jennie, Jenni), and Jenna.

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