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.

Another name which was originally unrelated is the British name Guinevere (Guenièvre in French), a variant Old French spelling[citation needed] of Gwenhwyfar, which in Welsh is a combination of the word gwen (mod.

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.