{"id":13389,"date":"2018-05-18T09:16:59","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T13:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13389"},"modified":"2018-05-18T12:35:02","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T16:35:02","slug":"baby-naming-issue-for-twins-of-the-same-sex-how-do-you-choose-which-twin-gets-which-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/05\/18\/baby-naming-issue-for-twins-of-the-same-sex-how-do-you-choose-which-twin-gets-which-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: For Twins of the Same Sex, How Do You Choose Which Twin Gets Which Name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I am a longtime reader and I have always enjoyed your posts but never had any personal questions about naming babies (I don’t have any, don’t plan to for a while if ever!).<\/p>\n

BUT. Twins run in my family, and I have always had this sort of hunch that if I do conceive children, I might have twins. And so sometimes I do think about how I would go about choosing twin names. I’ve never settled on any in particular, but then today, I was struck by a question I can’t get out of my head!<\/p>\n

When someone has twins of the same sex (or any pair of twins where the names aren’t going to be assigned to the babies on the basis of their sex), how do you choose which twin gets which name?! Is it PURELY random? That seems…strange. But how do you decide, if it isn’t random?<\/p>\n

Anyway, was just curious if you have thoughts about this or if other readers (perhaps those who have named twins) do?<\/p>\n

Thanks so much!<\/p>\n

Maya<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before we knew we were having a boy and a girl and therefore didn’t need to worry about which twin would get which of two names, I gave this issue a fair amount of thought. It seemed kind of fun to figure out which would be which but also kind of stressful\/weird: I imagined looking at the twins later and realizing their names could easily have been the other way around. Or worse: thinking that the names would have been a better fit the other way around.<\/p>\n

One way I considered was to look at the twins after they were born and then figure out which one looked\/acted more like which name.<\/p>\n

Another way I considered was to pick which order I preferred to say the names in, and then dole them out in that order: if I preferred “George and Oliver” to “Oliver and George,” then Baby A could be George and Baby B could be Oliver.<\/p>\n

Or the names could be given in alphabetical order: that can also help other people remember the birth order, if there’s any advantage to that.<\/p>\n

Another way is to imagine the babies were suddenly singletons and one would be born now and one in a couple of years: which name would we like to use first? Give that name to Baby A. But I didn’t like the way that implied Baby A was getting the preferred name.<\/p>\n

Another way would be to go with what “felt right” for each baby. I definitely got a feeling for their little personalities while I was pregnant; whether or not those impressions turned out to be accurate, it would be a way to choose.<\/p>\n

I also considered doing random chance: write the names on slips of paper and draw, or flip a coin. That gives the comforting feeling of allowing fate to decide.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine had agreed before finding out she was having twins that a boy could be a junior. When she found out she was having twin boys, she could have figured it out by saying, “Okay, usually the firstborn boy is a junior, so in this case the firstborn twin boy will be the junior.” But she said she found that didn’t sit well with her: it seemed like giving too much specialness to one twin (this assumes that being a junior is a treat, but that is what this set of parents was indeed assuming). So they decided one twin would be the firstborn, and the other would be the junior.<\/p>\n

Because of the way the babies are referred to as Baby A and Baby B throughout the pregnancy, some parents choose an A name for Baby A and a B name for Baby B.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you’ve named same-sex twins or know someone who’s named same-sex twins, how was it decided which name would be given to which baby? Or, if you were having same-sex twins, how do you think you’d want to decide?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I am a longtime reader and I have always enjoyed your posts but never had any personal questions about naming babies (I don’t have any, don’t plan to for a while if ever!). BUT. Twins run in my family, and I have always had this sort of hunch that if I do conceive […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3tX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13389","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=13389"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13394,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13389\/revisions\/13394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}