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.
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.