581,000 girls were born with the name Jennifer in the 1970s.
17 million girls were born in the US in the 1970s.
3.4% of all girls for an entire decade were named Jennifer.

Which sounds small, but seeing how one name made up nearly 1 in 30 girls for a decade and held the most popular name spot from 1970 to 1984, it brings up a pretty simple question.

Why?

First up, some history on the name Jennifer.

Jennifer wasn’t a common name until 1906, when George Bernard Shaw wrote the book “The Doctor’s Dilemma” and the main character being named Jennifer caused an uptick.

Which is actually a weirdly common thing, with an example being Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which pretty much created the name Tiffany.

Tiffany was barely existed as a name in 1961, but was number 784 for most common girls names in 1962 and a decade later, it’d be number 61, only to be in the top 25 by the 70s.

An example of how things such as books, movies, songs and shows play a massive influence in how common a name is.

Looked at Jennifer and found the name was fairly common before 1970, where it spent the 50s in the top 100-110 and surged to the top 10 by the end of the 60s until it earned its record.

Looked to see what caused it the Jennifer boom in the 1970s and it seems to be tied with the 40s.

The first famous person named Jennifer was an actress born with the name Phylis Lee Isley. Her producer thought even for 1941, the name sounded like an old lady, so they rebranded her to the name Jennifer Jones.

Jennifer Jones would end up getting nominated for an Oscar five times and be one of the most successful actresses of the 20th century.

Her career undeniably had an impact, where Jennifer, similar to Tiffany was not in the top 500 names in the 40s and surged up in the 50s.

The final thing that also helped the spike was the 1970 movie Love Story, where Ali MacGraw played the main character, Jennifer Cavalerri.

And… That’s it.

Sounds simple, but looking at popular names, there seems to be a balloon effect, where they go from the bottom to the top over a period of 10-20 years and hold it until it’s too common.

Noah being a good example, where in the 80s and 90s, it was mainly in the bottom 50 names, but in the 2000s, it surged from 27 to 7 from 2000 to 2010 and hit number one 2013, where it held that title four years and has had the number two spot since.

Names like most things are a trend and be it Jennifer, Tiffany, Noah or whatever else, they come and go.