My cousins are in town this week and over the weekend my cousin and I were discussing baby names…how we picked our kids’ names, how they picked their girls’ names, names we like that our husbands have vetoed, names we like that we can’t use because close friends or family have used them, if we’re name secret keepers or share before the baby arrives namers (B and I fall into the secret category)…typical name talk stuff. I could talk about this all day, every day for the rest of my life, happily.
And then at book club Monday night, one of my friends announced her pregnancy and we got to talking about baby names, too. And so I threw out my favorite question: What would you name twins if it were just up to you and they were going to be born tomorrow? This is how I got Mr. B to continue to talk about baby names when we had decided on what we’d name Thomas if he was a boy or a girl (Thomas or Nell – the boy name was far more difficult to decide upon during my pregnancy with Nell). “Okay, but pretend that we had surprise twins – two boys, two girls, or a boy and a girl. Then what would we name them?” I still ask B this. “What if I found out I was pregnant with twins tomorrow, what would we name them?” B likes to mention that we’d probably be in lifestyle and budget shock if we found out that A) I was pregnant tomorrow and B) I was pregnant with twins. But this girl likes her hypotheticals.
So let’s play! What would you name twins? Ready for mine? (Note: If we have a third child, the name likely won’t come from this list because this is what I would name twins…and apparently B likes a say in the naming of kids and has vetoed all of these for one reason or another when I’ve mentioned them in the past).
Boy Twins: Luke Patrick and Andrew Michael…Luke and Drew…Tom, Nell, Luke and Drew.
Girl Twins: Mary Margaret (Maggie) and Jane Elizabeth…Maggie and Jane…Tom, Nell, Maggie and Jane.
Boy/Girl Twins: I’d probably go with Luke Patrick and Mary Margaret….Luke and Maggie. Tom, Nell, Luke and Maggie. (I almost feel like I should hunt down the Luke and Maggie who wronged Mr. B in his past life and give them a piece of my mind, because those have always been my two favorite names and they’re Mr. B’s two least favorite due to playground and high school mishaps. I pushed for Luke every single day of my pregnancy with Nell should she have been a boy, and every single day Mr. B said no. C’est la vie.)
Girl Twins if I didn’t care about sticking with relatively similar naming styles for all of our kids: Olive and Matilda.
Your turn. What would you name twins? You can give me actual names you’ve decided on, or what you love today but won’t tomorrow, or what you love but will never happen because the other person with a say in the matter doesn’t. Sound off!
Fun post!!
If I had complete say in the naming process, boy/girl twins would be Silas Jacob and Maris Rose. Boy/boy twins would be Silas Jacob and Samuel Jude and girl/girl twins would be Maris Rose and Miriam Leigh. (And I don’t necessarily like that the boy/boy and girl/girl combos start with the same letter, those just happen to be the names I love!)
Chad has strongly vetoed both Silas and Maris though, so Miriam and Samuel are the names we are between for this baby. Luckily, I love them almost as much as my top two picks.
PS – LOVE Olive and Matilda. If I wasn’t set on biblical names, I’d be all over old-fashioned names like that.
Kristal – I LOVE Samuel and Miriam. Great names, cannot wait to find out which one will get used!
Well since we’re having twin girls in a few weeks, I’ll just give you those names. Alexia & Taylor.
Check out my post on how we picked our Twins Names
Great post, Nina! I think you both did an excellent job!
I actually have twin boys (who are 14 months old) and choosing their names was a LONG process. We knew we were having boys, so we never even talked about girl names. We knew we wanted their first names to be their very own, but we also knew what we’d be using for middle names early on. Their middle names have special meaning.
From the start, my husband wanted to name one of the boys Klaus. No…I’m not kidding! To this day, I have no idea where he got that name. We went back and forth on a variety of combos. The thing is….with twins, they have to kind of “go together”. At least in my book.
So, the boys were born (2 months early) and we still had no names. About 6 hours after they were born, we had names. Mackey Laughlin and Drue Travis Michael. I love their names, and they fit them perfectly.
It’s funny….these weren’t even really names we had considered very much in the months before.
This is such a fun conversation! I had picked out names with a guy I dated for years and since we eventually broke I feel like those names are forever tarnished so perhaps I shall give you those:
Boy/Boy
James Owen and Jefferson Micheal
Girl/Girl
Lillian Marie and Piper Ester
Boy/Girl
James Owen and Lillian Marie
These are all combinations of family names. So maybe in the end I’ll keep the parts from my own family and just ditch the family from the ex.
Meredith, I was just talking to a friend last week and she said the same thing – the names she and her ex had picked out are now off the table, but she’s hanging onto one name that she liked and he didn’t! Makes total sense.
Love these types of hypotheticals – I don’t even think I can answer yet, I have to think about it longer! Love the names you listed though – Luke is my son’s name, my daughter is Annie (Anne). I LOVE LOVE LOVE the name Jane, but it feels a bit too close to Anne to me. Our girl name last pregnancy was Greta, but now we just had a good friend name her daughter that so that might be out (Plus my husband loves that name far more than I do). Charlie was a top boy name but I surrendered it to a friend who had twins (Arthur and Charlie are their names)
If it were JUST up to me with NO outside influence of friends/husband/family… I’d probably do Alice and Charlie for B/G twins. Really would be hard pressed to come up with another name for each sex I like as much as those!
I love both Alice and Annie (Anne) and I think I could get B to agree to Anne – if we could come up with a middle name. But that all depends on us having a 3rd, which is up for discussion but definitely not 100% the plan.
Girl twins, the only option in my book! Lauren Agnes and Mariah Jane.
I love this sort of question! Girl/girl twins would be Eleanor Joyce and Lydia Kate, boy/boy twins are more difficult – probably Oliver Jack and Luke Stuart and girl/boy would be Eleanor Joyce and Luke Stuart – I like Oliver best but couldn’t have Ellie and Ollie!
I LOVE Luke, Eleanor, and Lydia!
I also love Oliver, but I have a cat named Oliver. 
I love this game! I am a huge name fan. My little man is Wesley Daniel and because he’s just 8 months old I cannot fathom being pregnant with twins! Here are my names:
Boy/boy – Nolan Caleb and Isaac Davis
Boy/Girl – Nolan Davis and Clara Adele
Girl/Girl – Clara Grace and Lydia Adele
My husband HATES Lydia and insists all boys in our family should have D middle names…
Love this!
My twin niece and nephew are Eden Joy and Gabriel Martin. Eden because she brought peace and Gabriel because he passed away at birth but survived long enough to protect his sister and give her a chance to live.
My twins would be Benjamin William and Anna Kate.
Well I have twins so I will tell you how I came about their names. First, I did not know I was having twins until the 7th month as I used a midwife who had never delivered twins. (A story for another day!) I had my girl name, Naomi Marie, all picked out. Naomi was a Bible name I had always wanted for my daughter, and Marie is my grandmother’s middle name. My mother, once finding out that I was having twins, immediately started thinking of matching names. I was not for that at all until she threw out the name Nakomis from the poem “Hiawatha’s Childhood”. It wasn’t as matchy as some of the others she had tossed out. I really didn’t care for the “is” at the end of it though, so I changed it to an “a”, Nakoma. Nakoma’s middle name is Joy which is what I felt when I heard I was giving birth to twins. So Naomi Marie and Nakoma Joy were born 16 years ago last April, when I was 20 years old. How time has flown, and I still love their names! My mother has passed away, so the fact that she helped pick Nakoma’s name out is meaningful to both of us.
This comment has been removed by the author.
I’ve never commented before, but this is just too fun not to comment. I love names! I am pregnant with one baby, but for some reason I was sure we were having two, so up until recently I had actually been thinking about this very situation.
Boy/Girl– George Austin & Virginia Greer (but called Gigi or Ginger)
Girl/Girl– Virginia (Ginger/Gigi), & Joanne (Josie)
Boy/Boy– George Austin & Wayne or Ford (not sure on that last boy name)
All of them are family names, which is important to me. Wouldn’t it be fun…but oh so hard…to have twins!
Yep, I think it would be both fun and hard! I babysat for twins growing up and always wanted twins of my own…but I have a feeling that in 5 hour increments it was easier than 24/7 for 18 + years
I am a twin and my parents named us Deborah Esther and Daniel Edward. Debbie & Danny.
I am a huge fan of matching initials for twins because of this. 
I have been racking my brain and I truly can’t think of any twin names. I like the names Hannah and Paige for girls, but I don’t know that they “go together.” I like Paul and Paige, and Hannah and Henry. But I already used Henry. Clearly, I have a lot going on since I’ve been thinking about this since I read your post this morning.
I have been thinking about this post for days now, what a fun game! Rob refuses to play… he always picks the weird names from the varied prayers to the saints at mass. So he jokes he wants a daughter named Perpetua.
haha. 
So I’m at a loss for twin names, but I’ll give you our singleton names: If we ever have a boy, his name will be “John Patrick”. If I had full reign to pick a girl name, it’d be “Felicity Jane”. I’m not a huge fan of “matching” names for twins or siblings… I think the Duggars ruined that for me.
ps: LOVE the name “Olive”. Did you know there’s even a Saint Olive? That’s the rule in our house… baby names have to be saint’s names.
We have a John Paul Christopher and Graham Jacob Michael. Graham was a twin but I lost the other. If his twin was a girl she would have been Grace Kathryn. If the twin was a boy he would have been Georgio Robert. Theres no way I would have had 2 girls but they would have been Rose Kathryn and Grace Michaela