As you might have guessed by my URL, I was born in the Year of our Lord 1967. It was a fine year. Vietnam ended, sort of, but, I digress.
Despite my name, the year 1967 was not a popular year for the name Jennifer. But, lord-have-mercy, by the time I was 15, there were dozens of little Jennifers on my school bus. One Gen Xer named Jennifer even organized an art exhibit focused on the work of 11 Gen-X artists named Jennifer, Jen 11.
From Book-By-Its-Cover
It’s a little strange when you meet someone with the same name as yours. There’s this weird connection you have to this other person who is called the same thing as you. I always have a hard time saying their name…The exhibition was born from both a serious curiosity and a simple novelty. Have members of this Jen-eration unknowingly grown into a common artistic sensibility? Have they become creators of culture in their own particular way?”
Well, according to an article written by a New York Examiner, Jennifer along with other Generation X names are totally passé. It was bound to happen. Jennifer has joined the ranks of Myrtle, Bertha and Clyde.
When you were little, what do you wish your parents had named you?
I wanted to be Jennifer, because quite nearly all of my friends were. I also wanted to be Suzanne.
I admit, I was happy when Friends got to be so popular and ‘Rachel’ was finally trendy!
What a great book idea! I always liked Alex. I was fond of my name I just wished that my Mom had put Andi on my birth certificate and not Andrea. My mom wanted to name me after a soap opera character that she liked. She was watching a lot of soaps as she was confined to bed rest in my grandparents house while she was pregnant with me (my Dad was off fighting in that Vietnam thing…) but my grandparents told her no way could she name me Andi, that she had to go with Andrea and nickname me. I was never an Andrea and always wished for plain old Andi!