French-influenced variant of Janine, a diminutive of Jeanne meaning 'God is gracious.'
Jenine is a variant of Janine or Jeanine, names that trace a long path from one of the most given names in history: John. The Hebrew *Yochanan* — "God is gracious" — became the Greek *Ioannes*, the Latin *Johannes*, the French *Jean*, and finally the feminine French *Jeanne*, from which diminutives and elaborations multiplied across centuries. Jeannine and Janine emerged as affectionate forms in French, suggesting a young or beloved Jean, and the sound traveled into English-speaking countries in the twentieth century carrying its French elegance lightly.
The *Jen-* spelling of this family of names reflects the mid-century American tendency to render French sounds in more phonetically intuitive English forms — just as Geneviève became Jennifer, the -ine suffix names began appearing with *Jen-* prefixes that felt more native on the American tongue. Jenine in particular has a slightly more streamlined look than Jeanine, dropping the internal *a* and letting the name move more quickly from its opening consonant to its ending. It is the name in its most unadorned form.
The name was most popular in the mid-to-late twentieth century, carried by women who were often called Jenny in childhood and Jenine in full when they wished to be taken seriously. It occupies a middle distance between the casual and the formal — too long to be a pure nickname, too soft to be stiff. In its relative rarity today, it has acquired the glow that comes to names when a generation grows older: it feels like the name of a specific kind of competent, warm, unpretentious woman, and that association is not a bad inheritance.