Parents and/or Siblings of: Twins, Triplets, and Multiples...Oh My!

[natural]

I have seen a lot of twins/multiples threads bouncing around Namberry. Some who are asking for help on deciding names for their twins/multiples. Twins/Multiples you know or have known from school, work, neighborhood, etc. Well, I am curious about…

1. What are your children (twins or multiples) names? or What are you and your twin/multiple name?
   1a) Was there a special reason you choose their names? You like matchy-matchy names, names that start with the same letter, opposite meanings, same meaning different origin, etc.

2. Are they/you Boy/Boy, Girl/Girl, or Boy/Girl. Or if beyond two, gender combo? (There are some twins who have unisex names, so this question is here just in case others may not be sure.)

3. Are they/you identical or fraternal?

4. [name]How[/name] many minutes, hours were they apart. (In some cases, were they born on two different days/years? ie. Twin A born 12/31 @11:58 pm and Twin B was born 01/01 @ 12:03 am?)

5. [name]Do[/name] twins/multiples “run” in your family? (Basically, are there more than one set of twins/multiples in your extended family?)

6. [name]Do[/name] you have more than one set of twins/multiples.

I will not go into too deep of personal questions, but if they are other tidbits you would like to include, please feel free to do so. I am so curious.

[thompssn]

I have twins on the way and can answer most of your questions, with my perspective.

1. Our soon-to-be twins will be [name]Cormac[/name] [name]Sebastian[/name] & [name]Cordelia[/name] Janemarie.

a) We didn’t set out for matchy names, but ended up with it (after MUCH internal debate with myself and a few posts here). We both seem to like the hard-C names, and when we found out we were expecting again we picked out a boy name and a girl name. [name]Both[/name] options ended up being matchy with our first, [name]Conor[/name]. But, that didn’t bother me, as this was going to be my last pregnancy anyway and we weren’t going to fall into a “trap” of having to use “C” names. After we found out twins, I dropped the name thoughts until we found out genders. After we found out, I drove myself CRAZY trying to decided about matchy names for 3. And spent weeks, combing through other name options. Finally, I came to the realization that no other names were going to feel right. They were already [name]Cormac[/name] and [name]Cordelia[/name] and nothing would change that in my heart. My husband was always fine with it and couldn’t understand my dilemma.

He picked the middle names, off the cuff, one night as we were going to bed. [name]Sebastian[/name] has always been a favorite of mine, so that got no argument. And, his original pick of [name]Jane[/name] was turned into Janemarie because I didn’t want to use only my mother’s name, if [name]Jane[/name] was what he really wanted. So, we added his mother’s mn too, to keep from disappointing anyone (combination style was decided after some debated posts on here too…lol).

2. Boy/Girl (hope their names lead to that conclusion).

3. Fraternal, of course. Mixed genders are Always fraternal.

4. Timing of arrival is yet to be determined!

5. Twins do Not run in my family, in as many generations as anyone living can remember. There are no other twins in my family, out of Many, many full branches of the family tree.

Actually found out after getting into twin research that identicals Never “run” in a family. No one is sure why identicals happen and everyone has the same odds of conceiving identicals. It’s totally sporadic.

And, contrary to popular belief, twins can only “run” from the mother’s side of the family. Having twins is ALL about how many eggs are dropped in a particular cycle. Nothing about the father’s genes/sperm influences how many eggs the mother drops. So, it’s either because the mother inherited a gene (from her family) that makes it more likely that she’ll drop two eggs in a cycle, or it’s because (as in my case) she’s getting older and basically “malfunctioning”…lol. And instead of dropping the usual, one egg, two are dropped.

A lot of people will (and do) fight the logic of that, but the science is there. I guess it comes from the fact that people know couples who have twins on the Dad’s side, but not on the mother’s. That’s just coincidence. It’s either an error made by her body, or the genes still Have to be present in the mother. [name]Just[/name] because twins hadn’t happened on her side in recent memory, doesn’t mean that they’ve never happened and it doesn’t mean that she’s not carrying a gene that had been submissive for everyone else but became dominant in her, for whatever reason.

[name]Hope[/name] that made sense.

6. Only one set and not planning on becoming pregnant again for various reasons.

[natural]

Thank you for posting [name]Stephanie[/name]. Your post did make sense. Some information I already knew and other parts I did not. [name]Even[/name] though their is plenty of information out there, I wanted to know mostly from the parent(s)/sibling perspective, not from a medical perspective. And where to get this information, Nameberry, of course.

Maybe I should rephrase the question #5, “Are there more than one set of twins/multiples in your family?”

There are no twins on my side, as far as I know. Yet, my brother has a set of fraternal twins; however, I do not know if his wife’s family have more than one set or just theirs.

[thompssn]

Didn’t mean to get overly medical, and was directing it to anyone out there who might be reading and not know (I didn’t understand Anything about twins until I was told, after I was expecting them).

[name]Just[/name] found all of the information really interesting, after we found out. I didn’t know any of it before, because I never had any reason to think about it or find out about it before. And, I found that usually the only other people who know are also parents of twins, who found out the same way I did, after it happened! lol

Of everyone else that I talk about it with, half understand and believe the medical side that I was presented with and in turn pass on to those who ask…the other half, for whatever reason don’t believe me at all. [name]One[/name] lady even argued with me that boy & girl twins could be identical. That there were some in her family. No matter what I said, she never would acknowledge that “identical” means Everything is the same (even what’s inside of the diapers!). She got very upset with me, so I dropped that one as quickly as I could.

[maggiemary]

1. I’m a twin, my sister and I are [name]Elizabeth[/name] [name]Ann[/name] and [name]Margaret[/name] [name]Mary[/name].

1a) No special meaning, just names my parents liked. They picked one each, Mom picked [name]Elizabeth[/name], Dad picked [name]Margaret[/name]. Then vice-versa for the middle names, Mom picked [name]Mary[/name], Dad picked [name]Ann[/name]. Edited to add: They had a set of rules which were (1) The initial letter couldn’t be the same, (2) no cheesy matching names and (3) the names had to be a similar style (so we were never going to be [name]Elizabeth[/name] and [name]Kaylee[/name] for example)!

2. We are girl/girl

3. Identical I’m afraid

4. Only six minutes apart!

5. Yes - my dad is a twin (he has a fraternal twin brother), my mom’s older brothers are identical twins and my dad also has two siblings who are twins (boy/girl). So yes that means my paternal grandmother had TWO sets of twins (as well as three singletons). There are twins further back too.

[lucky_lindy]

1. My daughters’ names are [name]Vivian[/name] and [name]Kirsten[/name]. [name]Kirsten[/name] is a family name, and [name]Vivian[/name] is a name that both of us have always adored. It just so happens that both names end in a en/an sound, make them gel well together, but not match. When we put the two together it just seemed so perfect. I do not even think that we considered any alternate first names.

2. Girl/Girl

3. My girls are identical.

4. The girls were born 2 minutes apart.

5. No. Identical twins do not run in families. Identical twins are formed when an egg spontaneously splits after it has been fertilized. It is unknown why this happens. Anyone at any time could have identical twins. Identical twinning rates are the same across cultural and age boundaries. This is not the case with fraternal. Some ethnic groups have higher rates of fraternal twins, older women are more likely to hyper-ovulate and thus produce fraternal twins, and some women are prone to hyper-ovulate due to it being “in their family” and some women just hyper-ovulate because that is what their ovary felt like doing.

The moral of the story is that I am no more likely to produce twins again as any other person. However, mothers of fraternal twins cannot come to the same conclusion.

6. These are my only children.

I promise, if I have twins again I will keep Nameberry very abreast of my name selection process

[natural]

Thank you ladies for responding, this thread just makes me smile.

If my questions seem redundant or repetitive let me know and I will edit them. Or if you like to ask a question, I will include it in the main post, so that it will not get lost in between post.

[jollins]

@Thompssn - “indentical” (monozygotic) twins can technically be born boy/girl. If the sex gene of the embryo has an extra x chromosome (the fertilized egg would be an xxy) then when the egg splits one can have xx (girl) genes and one can have xy (boy) genes, it can happen. This is rare, but possible.
However, although they come from the same egg, they aren’t ‘genetically’ identical, so you’re right, they don’t end up the same, but this may be where the confusion comes from…? They would be the same in every respect except gender.

@natural

1. [name]Aurora[/name] [name]Hope[/name] nn “[name]Rory[/name]” and [name]Astrid[/name] [name]Alice[/name]
   1a) We are Irish / Australia and so are the Auroras, - Borealis & Australis. [name]Aurora[/name] was the goddess of the dawn and she has sandy hair and light blue eyes, like a sunrise. “[name]Rory[/name]” was an Irish red-haired king and [name]Rory[/name] McIlroy (world champion golfer) went to my school. “[name]Hope[/name]” goes well with our first daughter [name]Imogen[/name]'s middle name, “[name]Joy[/name]”.
   My husband liked [name]Astrid[/name], it seemed to match (heavenly meaning, begins with “A”, 6 letters, etc.) and there is Norse ancestry on his side. He comes from [name]Alice[/name] Springs and [name]Alice[/name] is also a handed down family middle name.
   We didn’t want rhyming names, but like that they ‘fit’ together yet are different.

2. Girl/Girl

3. Fraternal (and VERY different - introvert/extrovert, colouring, bodyshape, etc.)

4. 1 minute apart - caesarian.

5. We have twins in the family, but also due to fertility treatment, which is much more prevalent than naturally occurring twins.

6. My first was also a twin, but one did not survive past 1st trimester.

[name]Hope[/name] that helps!!

[everwaiteing]

1. I and my twin are [name]Martha[/name] [name]Jane[/name] and [name]Irene[/name] [name]Claire[/name].

1a) For first names, my parents named us after our grandmothers. (I am named after my maternal grandmother.) My middle name, [name]Jane[/name], came from my mother whose double first name was ‘[name]Mary[/name] [name]Jane[/name].’ For my sister’s middle name, my mother picked out [name]Claire[/name], which was a name she apparently just liked a lot.

[name]Even[/name] though, I am very honored to have been given part of my mother’s name, I am a little jealous that my sister has a middle name that my mother picked out just for her and is not after any family member. I’ve always wondered what my name would have been had I not been a twin. Would my parents have named me after [name]ONE[/name] of the grandmothers? A combination of their two names? Would my name have been something entirely different? If so , what? What were my mother’s favorite girl names? I will never know the answers to these questions. She died when I was seven. A couple of years ago, I asked my dad what names they considered before knowing we were twins. He said he could not remember any alternate girl names they may have considered. He said they both loved the idea of naming us after our grandmothers and never doubted their decision. He said he always loved our names. He also said that he and my mother specifically did NOT want to use matchy or rhyming names for us.

From the perspective of being a twin myself, I prefer giving twins independent names that are no more similar (or linked) than any other two children in the family. Twins (especially same gender) have to share so much in life, and are linked together in people’s minds. The connectedness – and being seen as one half of a pair – can be stifling sometimes. My sister and I were often just referred to as “the girls” or “the twins.” I cherished anything that made me feel like a separate individual. Ideally, I would want my twin sister and I to have names that we would have had if we were two non-twin daughters in the family.

When I named my daughter, I wanted to give her a first name that I ‘just’ loved and a middle name with family significance.

2. As indicated above: Girl/Girl twins.

3. Identical twins. My mother usually dressed us in matching clothes until second grade.

4. I was born six minutes before my sister. We both have a very strong sense of birth order within our family, in spite of the fact that we were born just minutes apart.

5. I have a maternal aunt and uncle who are twins. So, my mother was more likely than average to have fraternal twins, yet she had identical twins.

6. My parents only had one set of twins.

[aubreyjosephine]

1. Our twin girls who will be born in [name]December[/name] are most likely going to be named [name]Eloise[/name] [name]Mary[/name] & [name]Clara[/name] [name]Josephine[/name].
   1a. Well, they will probably be born around [name]Christmas[/name], so that gave us the middle names (and [name]Clara[/name] is the name of the girl in The Nutcracker). We love vintage names, so that gave us the first names.

2. I think it’s pretty obvious they’re both girls.

3. Identical! I can’t believe it! We’re going to have a life full of messing up their names!

4. They’re not born yet.

5. I have second cousins who are triplets and my great-grandmother was a twin.

6. Not yet! These are our first kids!

Other stuff: The twins were conceived naturally, I didn’t take any fertility pills. Also, (we learned this trick from my triplet cousins) we will probably end up always dressing one twin in one color, and the other twin in another color, until they get old enough to dress themselves, because then we may actually be able to tell them apart!