Um, what do I call you? J.? Lea?
The J. stands for Jennifer, so you can feel free to call me any variation of that as long as it’s not Jenny! For hopefully obvious reasons, I went with a variation of my name rather than publishing simply as Jennifer López. Friends call me Jennifer, Jen, J. Lo, J. and probably a bunch of other things. Of course, you can certainly call me J. Lea if you like! Speaking of which…
How do you pronounce Lea?
You’re probably tempted to pronounce it lee-uh, but it’s actually pronounced lee. It rhymes with sea! Don’t feel bad if you’ve been saying it wrong. I was never the kind of kid whose parents often busted out the middle name when speaking to them, so even I didn’t realize I was saying my own middle name wrong for quite a long time!
Are you named after that other Jennifer Lopez?
Nope. That J. Lo is 14 years older than me, so she wasn’t famous yet when I was born.
Jennifer Lopez fun facts!
- The singing and dancing Jennifer Lopez’s middle name is Lynn, so we have the same initials
- I had my 15 minutes of internet fame when the Humans of New York Facebook page featured a girl named Beyonce and I commented that I could relate. People still mention seeing my comment there, more than two years later.
- Through that HONY story, I made an online friend whose full name is only a single letter off from mine, but it’s pronounced exactly the same. Her middle name is Lee!
- According to the maybe-not-super-accurate-but-way-better-than-me-guessing site Howmanyofme.com, Jennifer and Lopez are both the 21st most popular first and last names, and there are nearly 3,500 Jennifer Lopezes in the United States.