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There has never been a name like Jennifer.

Take your Liams, Olivias, Ethans, Emmas, Avas, Michaels, Williams and Christophers — none of them, not one, can match the Jennifer juggernaut.

Beginning in 1970, Jennifer was the top female baby name in the U.S., a position it would hold for a solid 14 years. The run was mirrored in Canada and, to a lesser extent, in the U.K. All before the Internet, before there was any readily available list of popular baby names from province-to-province or state-to-state.

Sure, lots of names drift in and out of popularity; but Jennifer was more than just a common baby name, it was a bona fide trend, a phenomenon. For a generation, it was almost impossible to walk into any grade-school classroom in North America without running into one — and probably two — girls named Jennifer, or Jenny or Jen.

“Jennifer is a case unto itself,” says Linda Rosenkrantz, who has been studying baby name trends since the ’80s. “The Jennifer epidemic came to signify a whole generation.”

And then one year the name just fell out of use. Its popularity didn’t waver, it plummeted faster than an optimistic stock market puffed out on subprime credit and never recovered.

That year was 1984.