T. writes:<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m due with twin boys in 2 weeks, and we still aren\u2019t settled on names.\u00a0 Our last name is like Brown, but with different vowels- which works well with a lot of names.\u00a0 Our daughters names are Catherine and Nora- both old family names and sum up my style- classic, vintage, a little Irish, not over-popular, easy to recognize and spell.\u00a0 The twin names we are considering are Doyle (family name) and Daniel (solid timeless name, and I like the nickname Danny for a kid, and Dan for an adult).\u00a0 What do you think?\u00a0 I don\u2019t love either one like I loved my girls names and neither does my husband, but there are none that we like better.\u00a0 Some names that we both really liked, but can\u2019t use because they are totally overused in both our families are Patrick, William, James, Thomas- they will be our selections for middle names depending on which first names we choose.\u00a0 I feel like we are overlooking some great names that we just haven\u2019t thought of yet.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to do \u201cB\u201d names, but are otherwise open.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to be matchy matchy, but want names that sound right together.\u00a0 <\/div>\n<\/div>\nI guess our first concern is \u201cDoyle\u201d too strange for a first name?\u00a0 I like that it\u2019s unique and it has lots of family meaning to me , but don\u2019t want to sound weird.\u00a0 Then, is Daniel way too common?\u00a0 To give you an idea of other names we liked:\u00a0 I liked Cormac, Colin, Bennet, Theodore (Teddy), but hubby hated all.\u00a0 Hubby liked Christian, Jonah, Andrew, Peter, but I hated all.\u00a0 Help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The first thing that catches my attention is how different in popularity Daniel and Doyle are: according to the Social Security Administration, Daniel was #10 in 2011, and Doyle hasn’t been in the Top 1000 since it dropped out in 1982.\u00a0 (For comparison, Catherine was #161, Katherine was #61, Nora was #137, and Norah was #263.) In 2011, there were 15,138 new baby boys named Daniel and 10 new baby boys named Doyle.<\/p>\n
The second thing I notice is that the name Daniel has a couple of natural nicknames, and the name Doyle doesn’t have any at all. <\/p>\n
The third thing I notice is that as a twin set, Daniel and Doyle will please the public’s taste for a twin-name gimmick: in general, people will react favorably to the matching rhythms and matching D and Y and L sounds. But they are QUITE sound-alike:<\/p>\n
d + an + yul
d + oy + yul<\/p>\nThe different letters help make them visually dissimilar, and the familiarity of one and the unfamiliarity of the other help as well, and those matching rhythms\/sounds will help tie the name Doyle in with the style of his three siblings’ names—but even with all this, I’m hesitant about the names sharing too many sounds.<\/p>\n
One exercise I used when trying to name my own twins was to pretend they were being born separately: I’d think, “Okay, what if I were just having a girl now, what would I name her? And then let’s pretend she’s here and named, and now I’m expecting just a boy—what would I name him?” It may help to think about what you might name a boy if you were expecting only one—and then what you might name another if you had a fourth child later on, if you found you were having another boy.<\/p>\n
Another exercise I used was to find a name I really wanted, and then see if I could find a name I liked that went with it. (This failed me, but was still useful: it helped me conclude that I wasn’t going to be able to find the gimmick I was hoping for. I’d wanted at least matching initials or same number of letters\/syllables or SOMETHING.)<\/p>\n
I’d thought I might suggest names based on the other names you’d considered, but I’m having trouble getting a feel for what each of you loves\/hates. Instead, I am going to indulge in a little Fantasy Twin Naming, pairing up some of my own favorite boy names that are even within spitting distance of the style of Catherine and Nora:<\/p>\n
Frederick and George
Edmund and Henry
Simon and Frederick
Simon and Isaac
Isaac and Frederick
John and Daniel
Elliot and Malcolm
Louis and George
Milo and Emmett
Milo and Malcolm
Oliver and Benjamin
Oliver and Henry
Daniel and Jonathan
Ian and Rhys
Ian and Leo
Davis and Harris
Ruben and Rhys
Rufus and Ruben
Rhys and Aidric
Felix and Aidric
Calvin and Sullivan
Calvin and Malcolm
Anderson and Sullivan
Anderson and Harrison
Keegan and Declan
Daniel and Declan
Simon and Oliver
Milo and Felix
Wesley and Henry <\/p>\nSince you have two D names you like, one idea is to use Daniel as one baby’s first name, and Doyle as the other baby’s middle name—or the other way around, with Doyle as one baby’s first name, and Daniel as the other baby’s middle name. Then find another pair of common\/uncommon names that also share an initial, so that the twins have swapped initials and matching commonness\/uncommonness of names. …I’m not explaining this well; I’ll do an example. If you liked Felix and Frederick, for example, you could have Daniel Felix (D. F.) and Frederick Doyle (F. D.), or Felix Daniel (F. D.) and Doyle Frederick (D. F.). Or if you like Henry and Hugo, you could have Daniel Hugo (D. H.) and Henry Doyle (H. D.), or Hugo Daniel (H. D.) and Doyle Henry (D. H.).<\/p>\n
Or, since Doyle is a family name, maybe you can use it as Baby A’s middle name and find another family name you can use as a middle name for Baby B, and then you can find a first name for Baby B that starts with the same letter as the new family name. Urg, it is hard to explain these things! I mean if you find another family name, and let’s say it’s Murphy, you can have M____ Doyle and D____ Murphy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
T. writes: I\u2019m due with twin boys in 2 weeks, and we still aren\u2019t settled on names.\u00a0 Our last name is like Brown, but with different vowels- which works well with a lot of names.\u00a0 Our daughters names are Catherine and Nora- both old family names and sum up my style- classic, vintage, a little […]<\/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-6152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Be","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","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=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}