Juniper

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.
In 2011, Juniper entered the top 1000 list of given names in the United States for the first time and is quickly becoming a 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), Pamela Dean's novel Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, and the Donovan song, "Jennifer Juniper".
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.

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Coniferous evergreen shrub of northern regions, late 14c., gynypre, etc. (later altered to conform to Latin), from Latin iuniperus "the juniper tree" (source of Old French genevre, French genièvre, Spanish enebro, Portuguese zimbro, Italian ginepro, and, via Old French, Middle Dutch genever), a word of uncertain origin. Perhaps it is related to iunco "reed," but there are phonetic difficulties. Watkins has it from PIE *yoini-paros "bearing juniper berries," from *yoi-ni- "juniper berry," perhaps from a non-IE language, + *-paro "producing" (from PIE root *pere- (1) "to produce, procure"). Applied to various North American species from 1748. In the English Bible (late 14c.), it renders Hebrew rethem, the name of a white-flowered shrub unrelated to the European evergreen, as the Latin word does in the Vulgate.

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Youth producing, evergreen.

Jennifer, Geneva, Genevieve

Popularity	Name	Birth Year	Description
1	Junior Juniper
2	Juniper	1190	Early Friar Minor
3	Tony Juniper	1960	British environmentalist
4	Robert Juniper	1929	Australian artist
5	Juniper Shuey	1974	American artist
6	John Juniper	1862	English cricketer
7	Ted Juniper	1901	English footballer