Double the fun: The rules for naming baby twins

Choosing names for baby twins is a lot harder than it looks. There is so much to consider, plus if you’ve got other kids (or plan to have others) you’ll want to think about how your twins’ names will fit with the other siblings too!

Karen Bleakley

3 min read

June 30, 2023 - 1:48PM

Baby

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When we fell pregnant, we came up with lots of fantastic girl’s names.

At the 12-week scan, we found out our ‘baby’ was actually twins. At the 20-week scan, we found out we were expecting two BOYS!

I don’t know why, but we found it really challenging thinking of boy’s names that felt right, and when you need to find two names that work together it creates a whole other challenge!

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Finding the perfect pairing

We created our own rules for choosing names for our twin boys. Of course, lots of people go against these rules and that’s OK (each to their own!), but we wanted to create a framework for naming our twins as we struggled to come up with ideas.

Twin names need to fit together more closely than regular siblings as their names are always said together. Twins are invited to parties together, they share a birthday, they’re in the same school year (and sometimes the same class) and they spend so much of their time together. Especially in the early years, it’s hard to say one without mentioning the other.

That’s a lot of pressure to find names that just roll off the tongue together perfectly! To make things easier for us, I created some rules…

Karen and her happy family. Source: Supplied

Rules for naming our twins

I didn’t want the names to be too matchy-matchy

I didn’t want names that felt too similar. I wanted our babies to be unique individuals, not just half of a couple. For me, that meant giving them solid names that stood on their own AND worked as half of a pair too.

I didn’t want alliteration

Lots of people love alliteration in names, especially for twins, but it’s not something we wanted. I felt that giving them both the same first initial would confuse things in future – imagine all of the mix-ups with mail if they both had the same first initial and surname?!

I didn’t want to theme their names

I have friends who’ve named their kids with themed names – place names, flower names, season names. None really felt right for us for our twins so we actively decided to totally avoid any theme.

I wanted to choose names that could be shortened

At school, I was always frustrated that my name couldn’t be shortened into anything cool. I wanted to choose names for my kids that could be shortened into nicknames by their friends.

I wanted names that were similar but different

I wanted to choose names that had a similar feel and vibe. They either needed to both be traditional names, or both be unique names, or both be old-fashioned names. Mixing and matching – say one old-fashioned name with one modern name - can sound jarring with twins. There needed to be some kind of flow with them.

I wanted to avoid the classics while not being too unusual.

We lived in the UK when our babies were born, and names over there tend to be more traditional than in Australia. There are so many classic names over there (James, Edward, Daniel…), and while we didn’t want something that was too common, we also didn’t want to choose something that would make our kids stand out too much. It was a difficult balance!

Source: Supplied

Getting the names just right

There are definitely no hard and fast rules to follow, but it really helped us to come up with our own system for choosing their names. I really recommend writing down what matters most to you if you’re in the process of trying to name your twins!

Naming your kids is a huge responsibility. They have to carry their names around for their whole lives.

No pressure!