diff --git a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/jemalloc/package.py b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/jemalloc/package.py
index eb5f372142..352b4385c3 100644
--- a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/jemalloc/package.py
+++ b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/jemalloc/package.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ class Jemalloc(Package):
 
     variant('stats', default=False, description='Enable heap statistics')
     variant('prof', default=False, description='Enable heap profiling')
+    variant('je', default=False, description='Prepend the public API functions with "je_"')
 
     def install(self, spec, prefix):
         configure_args = ['--prefix=%s' % prefix, ]
@@ -30,6 +31,8 @@ def install(self, spec, prefix):
             configure_args.append('--enable-stats')
         if '+prof' in spec:
             configure_args.append('--enable-prof')
+        if '+je' in spec:
+            configure_args.append('--with-jemalloc-prefix=je_')
 
         configure(*configure_args)