{"id":7247,"date":"2008-05-11T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T22:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2008\/05\/11\/twins-lincoln-and-lilliansuzanna\/"},"modified":"2008-05-11T18:24:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T22:24:00","slug":"twins-lincoln-and-lilliansuzanna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2008\/05\/11\/twins-lincoln-and-lilliansuzanna\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins! Lincoln and Lillian\/Suzanna"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen writes:<\/p>\n

Here’s a naming fiend question: What do you think of matching twin names? Evil? OK, if not carried too far? (We will NOT be going for the anagram names Roland and Arnold, for instance. Or rhyming. Gag.)<\/p>\n

Baby B is going to be Lincoln (Lincoln Theodore if he is in fact the only boy) and that’s that. For Baby A, assuming her to be a her and not a sneaky boy, we are wavering between Lillian Ruth and Suzanna Ruth. Both of them mean approximately the same thing and would be chosen in honor of the same family members.<\/p>\n

I like Lillian\/Lilly a little better (my grandmother’s first name is Lillie) even though it is so very popular right now. (The same thing happened to Abigail. I can’t help it if other people have good taste!) Also, Link and Lilly sounds rather cute together.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I think my husband prefers Suzanna slightly. There is no doubt that it would be handy to have a separate first initial to differentiate things. We would use the nickname Zuzu until she got old enough to object, and after that I rather fancy Zanna and hope she does, too. I abhor Suzy or anything that sounds like it, which makes me a tad nervous about using this name.<\/p>\n

If Baby A is a boy after all, he will probably be Emmett (Another last name! Gasp! But a traditional usage as a first name. Also it means “truth” in Hebrew.)<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ooooo, TWIN names! I found it both highly fun and highly stressful to name my twins. Matching twin names (Timmy and Tommy, Sharon and Karen, Paul and Paula) have been out of style since Timmy and Sharon and Paula were on the list of hot baby names. You do still hear of people doing it, of course, but the current prevailing attitude is Twin Names Should Not Match.<\/p>\n

Still, I was hoping for some slight matchiness: same first initial, maybe, or at least same syllables or same number of letters! SOMEthing! The pseudonyms I use for them (Elizabeth and Edward) are misleading, because we ended up with zero matchiness of any kind: the girl name we liked best and the boy name we liked best didn’t have anything in common, and we weren’t willing to give up either name, so we gave up on the matchiness instead. Or perhaps “coordination” would be a more appropriate word: we weren’t trying to MATCH so much as coordinate.<\/p>\n

Even though I still think wistfully of alliteration, I do think it’s a good twin-naming exercise to think of the twins arriving as singletons instead of together: which name would you choose for the first baby, born on his or her own, and then what name for the second baby, born a couple of years after that? If you had a son named Lincoln already, what would you name his sister?<\/p>\n

As you point out, it is very handy indeed to have different initials: for the baby born after the twins, I leaned heavily toward any name candidate with a yet-unused initial.<\/p>\n

If you do go with Lincoln and Lillian, I notice that “Linc and Lilly” sounds like “Lincoln Lilly.” I’d switch the order to “Lilly and Linc”—but that sounds like “Lillian Linc”!<\/p>\n

Let’s ask Mairzy<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Although I’ve always actively hoped against having twins, I have to say, I envy you (and Swistle) the fun of twin-naming! This is my chance to have a bit of the fun without actually having two babies at once. (Note: the Queen and I are friends, but I don’t live close enough to babysit… which means I can offer with great abandon because she can’t take me up on it.)<\/p>\n

My opinion of twin names — a completely unauthorized opinion but when did that ever matter? — is that they should go together but not match. Tenleigh and George, for instance, do not go together. Suzanna and Lincoln go together very well, but aren’t a package deal. Lincoln and Lillian edge over the package-deal line.<\/p>\n

Lincoln is a cool name, and Link a cool nickname. Also, Link and Lilly (I like the double-L spelling) is very cute. But, coolness and cuteness aside, I think you’ll drive yourself crazy with those names. There is every possibility that you’ll refer to your children as “Lill and Linky.” And then there’s the Repeating Initial trap. In my family, none of us has matching or rhyming names. But some of us (my son and I, my husband and daughter) have the same first initial. Labeling things has become a certified headache. If there are going to be more than four people in the household, Avoid Repeating First Letters! Then again, I love my children’s names so much that I don’t know which one I’d change. Hm. Maybe I’d change mine and my husband’s.<\/p>\n

Suzanna is a lovely name. I do prefer the Susannah spelling — it’s softer — but Suzanna is legitimate. Plus, you can hope to use Zanna with that spelling. (What sixteen-year-old girl wouldn’t want a cool name beginning with Z?) Nowadays, people don’t automatically jump to nicknames like previous generations did; I don’t think you have to worry about “Suzy.”<\/p>\n

If Suzanna turns out to be a sneaky boy… I love last-names-as-first-names. My own son’s name is a surname, although it’s been used as a first name long enough that you don’t immediately realize it. But that’s the type of name I always find myself picking out: one of the top contenders on our boy list is Reid. And it’s an age-old tradition, not necessarily trendy and preppy. As for Emmett… we not only considered Emmett for a boy, but we went a step beyond and were going to use the actual Hebrew word for truth, Emeth. (I’m glad now that Baby turned out to be a girl, because I think we’d have regretted stepping out quite that far.). Emmett is a great name, one of the few gentlemanly boy names left not co-opted by girls (see: Avery, Reese, Vaughn). A word of caution: Emmett is up-and-coming popular. But that shouldn’t discredit such a good name (she says without any trace of bias, having just admitted that she was going to use a form of the name for one of her own children).<\/p>\n

To sum up, I like Lincoln and Suzanna best; and if the situation warrants it, Emmett and Lincoln would make a good pair.<\/p>\n

And call me any time you need a babysitter!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks, Mairzy!<\/p>\n

Let’s make a poll<\/strike> [poll closed; see below] that assumes Lincoln is the only boy, and let’s have a vote on the name for the girl twin: Lillian (Lillian and Lincoln, Lilly and Linc, matching initials), or Suzanna (Suzanna and Lincoln, Zuzu and Linc, non-matching initials).<\/p>\n

But even more interesting, I think, would be your thoughts on twin names. What would you do, if you had twins to name? Would you match a lot? a little? not at all? If you used my method of pretending you were naming the babies individually, would you hope for matchiness, or hope for none?<\/p>\n

[Poll results:<\/span>
Lincoln and Suzanna: 64 votes, roughly 63%
Lincoln and Lillian: 37 votes, roughly 37%]<\/p>\n

[<\/p>\n

Update!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mairzy writes:
Queen asked me to send an update for her, seeing as she’s now home with four children ages 4 and under. As she put it, “…Brain fog is getting pretty serious around here. Actually they’re both very good babies and either one would be a piece of cake solo. But not being able to part with either, I shall just have to figure out both at once.”<\/p>\n

So here are the new arrivals, born July 9:<\/p>\n

Suzanna Ruth
7lbs, 12oz; 20.5 in<\/p>\n

Lincoln Theodore
6lbs, 15oz; 20 in]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Queen writes: Here’s a naming fiend question: What do you think of matching twin names? Evil? OK, if not carried too far? (We will NOT be going for the anagram names Roland and Arnold, for instance. Or rhyming. Gag.) Baby B is going to be Lincoln (Lincoln Theodore if he is in fact the only […]<\/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-7247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1ST","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247","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=7247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}