Juniper (given Name)

Juniper (given Name)

The given name Juniper is either in reference to the English common name for the juniper tree or berry, or in reference to a derivation of the Welsh name Guinevere. Juniper has historically been used as both a boys' name and a girls' name. Juniper has never been on the top 1000 list of given names in the United States but is an increasingly popular girls name likely due to the popularity of a wide assortment of well-known fictional works, including the cartoon series The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, the movie Benny & Joon (where the Joon character was short for Juniper), and Pamela Dean's novel Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary.

The Juniper tree's name is derived from the Latin word juniperus. In Latin, juniperus is combination of the word junio, which means young, and parere, to produce, hence youth producing, or evergreen. Ginepro (Italian for Juniper), Ginevra (Italian variant form of Juniper), and Ginny are other names that also refer to the Juniper tree.

Juniper is used to flavour the alcoholic spirit gin. The traditional drink jenever and its French name genièvre are names for juniper. The French name was shortened to geneva, sounding the same as the place name, and further abbreviated to 'gin'.

In some French dialects, the plant is known as geneviève. This is also a French given name, notably that of Sainte Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. However, this name was derived from Latin Genovefa for Germanic Kenowefa (like English kin and wife) and originally had no link with genièvre (French for "juniper"), which is not a female first name. Another name which was originally unrelated is the British name Guinevere (Guenièvre in French), a variant Old French spelling of Gwenhwyfar, which in Welsh is a combination of the word gwen (mod. gwyn) which means "white" or "fair" and hwyfar which means a "spirit" or "fairy". This is also the origin of Jennifer, another name that sounds similar to Juniper. Because the Latin Juniperus family of names are the same or very similar sounding to the Welsh Guinevere family of names, it is very difficult to determine, for names that begin with gin-, jen-, or jun-, which family they ultimately originated with.