Taylor Lautner and Taylor Lautner? What Happens When Couples Have the Exact Same Name

Couples with duplicate names run into confusing situations. ‘Anytime anybody would say, ‘Hey Ryan,’ we’d both perk up like we were meerkats.’

Couples with duplicate names run into confusing situations. ‘Anytime anybody would say, ‘Hey Ryan,’ we’d both perk up like we were meerkats.’

When “Twilight” heartthrob Taylor Lautner got married on Nov. 11, he and his wife took the concept of two becoming one a step further than most: In addition to their legal union, Mr. Lautner and the registered nurse formerly known as Taylor Dome also unified their names.

“We’re literally going to be the same person,” the actor said in an interview on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” ahead of the wedding. “How narcissistic.” After the ceremony, he posted a photo gallery on Instagram with the caption “Mr. and Mrs. Taylor Lautner.”

Though their same-name reveal gave way to jokes online, the Taylors Lautner, who didn’t return requests for comment, are hardly alone in being a name-twin couple.

Taylor Lautner and Taylor Lautner (then Dome) attend the 2022 CMT Music Awards. Picture: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images

Ryan Webb and Ryan Webb, spouses who are oil and gas professionals in Oklahoma City, met on their lunch breaks. The shared first name took some getting used to. “It made the holidays real weird,” Mr. Webb says. “Anytime anybody would say, ‘Hey Ryan,’ we’d both perk up like we were meerkats.”

His family uses “Boy Ryan” and “Girl Ryan” to differentiate between him and his wife. (Mr. Lautner told Kelly Clarkson that he and his wife often go by “Boy Tay” and “Girl Tay.”) Ms. Webb’s family sometimes calls her Ryan Michelle, using her middle name.

The Webbs have two daughters, Ella and Katy. “If we ever do have a son, he will be named Ryan,” Mr. Webb says.

Taylor Nelson-Cook and Taylor Nelson-Cook, who live in Denver, have been together since they were teenagers. In a sense, their shared name brought them together. Ms. Nelson-Cook (nee Hernandez), now 29, reached out to Mr. Nelson-Cook on blogging platform Xanga to introduce herself because they were in the same soccer league. She said her name was Taylor, too, and that she played for the Tornadoes girls team (he played on the Tornadoes boys team) and she wanted to say hi.

Mrs. Nelson-Cook, who works in tech, says the decision to take her husband’s surname, which was already hyphenated, was straightforward: She wanted to share a name with her children, and Nelson-Cook couldn’t handle another hyphen.

Their neighbors call them “Gaylor” for girl Taylor and “Maylor” for male Taylor, says Mr. Nelson-Cook, 30, who is a sports performance trainer. Their friends include a married couple both named Jordan Johnson.

Back in the 1920s, when the British author Evelyn Waugh married the socialite Evelyn Gardner, their friends differentiated between the two by calling them “He-Evelyn” and “She-Evelyn,” according to Martin Stannard’s two-volume biography of the author.

Taylor Lautner also dated Taylor Swift. Picture: Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

During the last 50 years, given names for both boys and girls have become much more varied, says Cleveland Evans, an expert in personal names for the American Name Society. “Many parents [are] on the lookout for the perfect ‘different but not too different’ name,” says Mr. Evans. “This means that parents of girls have been even more likely to pick up on a formerly masculine name for a daughter than they used to be,” giving examples such as Avery, Madison and Riley, which was the ninth most-popular girls name in the U.S. last year, when including spelling variations.

Charlie ranked 53rd for girls names in the U.S. last year, he says, with 5,439 girls and 2,106 boys given Charlie as their official name. Emerson, he says, is still increasing for both sexes.

What are the odds of all these Emersons dating? The likelihood of two people with the same or similar name marrying is greater than what would be expected by pure chance, according to Brett Pelham, a professor of psychology at Georgetown University and Montgomery College. The large majority of humans have implicit egotism, he says, the unconscious preference for things that resemble the self. “Your name, your birth date numbers, even subtle aspects of people’s physical appearance—research shows that people look for those things in other people and are almost certainly unaware that they’re doing it,” Dr. Pelham says.

Chris Kolbe, a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom, met her husband, Chris Kolbe, a 36-year-old warehouse employee, online playing the videogame “Halo: Reach.” She says she wasn’t particularly fond of her maiden name, which was Whitehead, and the new one was “cheesy” (pronounced like colby cheese.) She says the couple makes a lot of cheese puns and opens each other’s mail all the time.

boy Alex (Colodny) and girl Alex (Pack), which are taken by Christina Stoever

Alex Pack, 29, and Alex Colodny, 29, aren’t married, but joke that they’re “partners in life and partners in Leath,” the microgreen-growing company they founded. Their team refers to them as the Alexes. According to the Brooklyn-based couple, who met on dating app Hinge, having the same name comes with business benefits, such as printing one set of business cards, identifying them as the Alexes. The “[e-mail]” email address, however, is a contentious matter.

“He stole it,” says Ms. Pack.

“I was the one setting it up,” replies Mr. Colodny.

The pair also shares a lot of clothing. Ms. Pack remembered a day when Mr. Colodny got dressed wearing a jacket of hers. “You look really cute, but I was going to wear that,” she remembers saying.

“It does feel like we’re slowly morphing into one person,” says Mr. Colodny, who has grown his hair to a length similar to Ms. Pack’s.

Kyle Beechy, left, didn’t believe Kyle Morrison when she said her name. “I actually pulled out my driver’s license to show him,” Ms. Morrison says.

When Kyle Morrison, a 35-year-old graphic designer, met Kyle Beechey, a 34-year-old writer, at a Kid Cudi concert, he didn’t believe her when she said her first name. “I actually pulled out my driver’s license to show him,” Ms. Beechey says.

Mike Titley-Harris and Michael Titley-Harris, who live in West Midlands, England, recently received a jury summons. “Michael opened the letter and we both said, ‘Who is this for?’ He phoned up the number on the letter and they said, ‘Whoever opened the letter is who has been called,’” Mike recalls. “Off you go, Michael!”

Both Messrs. Titley-Harris, who combined their last names when they married, are railway workers. “Same name, same job, same address, and we drive each other’s cars, so we could say same cars too!” says Mike.