Really? I always thought it was a very old name. Wasn't
Jennie one of the most common names in the 1800s?
I think the reason why they named her
Jennifer is because it was
Michael Landon's favorite name, or at least one of his favorite names. According to a site he named several of his characters
Jennifer or
Jenny /
Jennie and he himself had a daughter named
Jennifer Rachel. I used to love Little House on the Prairie when I was a child and remember looking up some trivia on the internet once.