{"id":13376,"date":"2018-05-11T09:48:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T13:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13376"},"modified":"2018-12-14T08:52:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T12:52:47","slug":"baby-twins-mnjgfic-siblings-to-cecilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/05\/11\/baby-twins-mnjgfic-siblings-to-cecilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Twins M@njg@fic, Siblings to Cecilia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting identical twins this fall. We have decided to not find out their gender and are completely stuck on names. Our last name is M@njg@fic. The easiest way to pronounce it is Main-ga-fitch. My husband was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so we tend to like names that have a Eastern European\/pan-European feel. We have one daughter already who’s name is Cecilia Ajsa (eye-sha).<\/p>\n

Before we knew we were having twins, we were pretty set on Vera for a girl and Roman for a boy. However, now that we know there are two of them, we can’t think of two more names to go along with these! I feel so much extra pressure naming a set of twins than I would for a set of siblings. We will constantly being saying their names as a pair for years to come and I would really like them to sound great together! I don’t want them to be matchey or rhymey, but I do want them to sound like an equal pair. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n

For girls we like distinctly feminine and romantic names, that aren’t too dainty. Other names we like, but are not sure of include,<\/p>\n

Tatiana- Beautiful name and I love that it has ancient Roman roots like Cecilia, but we do not like any of the nicknames like Tia and Tiana. Also, not sure if its too much to be a twin of Vera<\/p>\n

Helena\/Elena- I love Helena, my husband loves Elena but neither of us want to budge and go with the others name<\/p>\n

For boys, we are even worse off. My husband tends to like short nickname names like Leo and Gio. These are not really my style and my husbands name also is short and ends in an o, so it seems way too similar. Roman was the only name we could agree on. I really like Nicolai, but hate the idea of him being called Nick for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

Please help us finish our twin sibsets! I’m sure the perfect names to go along with Vera and Roman are out there and we just haven’t found them yet.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Taylor<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I found when selecting twin names that I had to sort of start all over. That is, with each of my pregnancies, I immediately started making lists of boy names and girl names—but when I found out during one of those pregnancies that I was having twins, I needed new lists. I still had a list of boy names and a list of girl names, but then I started lists of Twinned Names: in my case I didn’t know if the twins were identical or fraternal, so I needed three lists, one for boy\/boy twins, one for girl\/girl twins, and one for girl\/boy twins. In your case we need only boy\/boy and girl\/girl, unless there is any chance they are not identical and could be boy\/girl (though in that case perhaps you would go with Vera and Roman and be done with it).<\/p>\n

What I’m trying to say is that it might not work to find a girl name to go with Vera and a boy name to go with Roman. It might very well work—but it MIGHT not: there might not be any girl names you like as a twin for Vera and there might not be any boy names you like as a twin for Roman, and I think it can be helpful to go into it knowing that, so that if you DO run into what feels like a wall, you know not to keep walking into it. There were some names I liked for singleton babies that I just couldn’t make work for twins—not because I was looking for anything matchy, but because sometimes any two favorite names might not go together, and when it’s twins the names do get more attention as a pair.<\/p>\n

But for now, you are starting the way I would start: pretend the twins were instead going to be born as singletons, and choose one name for the first baby, and then work on a name for the next baby, pretending the second twin was instead born a couple years later. So you’d have Cecilia, Vera, and now it’s two years later and you are having another girl: what name do you want now? or you’d have Cecilia, Roman, and now a few years later you are having another boy: what boy names do you like for this next baby?<\/p>\n

If that doesn’t work, if for example you keep finding names that go well with Cecilia but not with Vera, or names that you love but they sound odd with Roman, then I suggest leaving aside the names Vera and Roman for now and making new lists of all the boy and girl names you like; then experiment with pairing up names from those lists. What I did was take a name from one list, and then fairly rapidly pair it with every single other name: “Edward and Daniel, Edward and Milo, Edward and Henry, Edward and Charles…” and then go to the next name on the list: “Daniel and Milo, Daniel and Henry, Daniel and Charles, Daniel and Alan…,” writing down good combinations as I went along. Some names got crossed off my list because they didn’t go well with anything else on the list.<\/p>\n

And when you’re making these master lists of all the names you like, don’t be too selective: that is, include names you like that your husband is tepid about, and names your husband likes that you’re tepid about, and names that don’t meet other preferences—allllll the names. A name one of you isn’t crazy about might seem much more appealing when paired up with another name. Put Elena and Helena on the list: maybe during the naming process one of you will be willing to give up your preferred version in order to get more say on the other name. (Or perhaps since you have already agreed to use your husband’s family name for all the children, and considering you are looking for names that represent your husband’s culture, your husband could take his turn and agree to use your preferred version of the name. It really seems like a very small step toward compromise on his part, considering everything you have already agreed to.)<\/p>\n

I really like Nicolai; do you like the nickname Nico any better? Though I agree that if you hate the nickname Nick, probably that rules the name out: it’s hard to know what the child himself may choose to be called.<\/p>\n

Same with Tatiana, if you strongly dislike the nicknames. And I don’t like it with Vera anyway: it makes the name Vera seem plain by comparison, especially when there is a third sister named Cecilia. Cecilia and Tatiana end up sounding like the twins, and Vera their older sister.<\/p>\n

Using your husband’s surname and also using your husband’s ancestry for the first names feels to me as if it leaves you a bit out in the cold. I wonder if it would open up the naming field to look at names from your family’s background? When parents are already having trouble finding names they can agree on, and then they level up to TWIN names, it seems like we should do anything we can to widen the pool of names.<\/p>\n

You mentioned liking names with ancient Roman roots, so I’ve flipped to the Classical section of The Baby Name Wizard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aelia and Livia
Augusta and Claudia
Cassia and Sabina
Lydia and Claudia (maybe matchier than you’d like, with the -dia endings)
Sabina and Lydia
Liviana and Sabina<\/p>\n

I started to make a similar list for boy names, but I wasn’t finding as many options. Marcus, maybe; Rufus, Darius, Cyrus—too much -us. Maybe one of those would work well with Roman, though: Roman and Marcus, Roman and Darius, Roman and Cyrus.<\/p>\n

I’m finding the name Roman particularly difficult to pair with anything else. It’s a word name, and word names can be tricky: they can feel simultaneously as if they MUST and MUST NOT be paired with another word name.<\/p>\n

I found a Behind the Name list<\/a> of names from Bosnia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and paired some of them up with Vera:<\/p>\n

Vera and Aida
Vera and Dalia
Vera and Lana
Vera and Lena (another possible Elena\/Helena compromise)<\/p>\n

I found a fair number of names on the list that worked in theory, but in the U.S. are much more popular names than Vera, and would be a very different style: Mia, Emma, Nora, Eva, Ella.<\/p>\n

If I look in the Slavic section of The Baby Name Wizard, I might pair up names such as:<\/p>\n

Anya and Mila
Danica and Veronica (matching endings)
Anya and Vera
Sonia and Vera
Daria and Katia
Vera and Irina
Vera and Nadia
Lana and Nadia
Mira and Sasha
Mira and Lana
Mira and Nadia
Verica and Irina<\/p>\n

Anton and Roman
Andrei and Nikolai
Ivan and Victor
Marek and Roman
Marek and Lukas
Roman and Ivan<\/p>\n

I think overall what is needed is MORE NAMES to work with. I think the place to start is with longer lists, so you have more room to play around with combinations.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Name update:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

We recently welcomed our identical twin girls! The process to finally decide on their names was a long one. We initially decided on Lydia and Helena, but after a little bit we both felt Lydia was not the right name for us. We kept coming back to Vera.<\/p>\n

In the end, Vera Aldina and Helena Marie were born on 11\/2! Their names fit them perfectly. Thank you and your readers for all your help!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! My husband and I are expecting identical twins this fall. We have decided to not find out their gender and are completely stuck on names. Our last name is M@njg@fic. The easiest way to pronounce it is Main-ga-fitch. My husband was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so we tend to like names that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3tK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13376"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13913,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13376\/revisions\/13913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}