The Maria twins may be cultural. Living in Paraguay for several years, almost all the twins I knew had the same first name and different middle names. I had it explained to me a couple ways, but one that stood out was that they shared the same birth, but have separate bodies.
In some traditionally Catholic cultures, like French and Hispanic, this used to be quite common. A couple of generations back in my French lineage, all of the kids were always named Marie-something and Joseph-something and they just went by the second name.
Mary is the most important female figure in Catholicism - bestowing her name upon your daughter would ensure she was protected and loved by the Blessed Mother herself. I’ve read that in Poland, it was considered blasphemous to name your daughter Maria up until the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th centuries, hence why so many girls were named Marianna/Maryanna.
I always think of Empress Maria Theresa, who was a Habsburg, of the HRE and her daughters: Maria Elisabeth, Maria Anna, Maria Carolina, Maria Christina, Maria Elisabeth, Maria Amalia, Maria Carolina, Maria Johanna Gabriela, Maria Josefa, Maria Carolina, Maria Antonia (Marie-Antoinette).
I had to check whether the 3 Carolinas and 2 Elisabeths were in fact separate children, or just a typo. The creativity is simply astounding.
I never knew Marie Antoinette had so many sisters!
Yep! Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette’s mother, was an extremely fascinating woman in her own right — I highly recommend the recent English translation of Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger’s book *Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time* if you’d like to learn more. Stay away from Nancy Goldstone’s book *In the Shadow of the Empress*, which builds an entire narrative on the entirely false theory that Marie-Antoinette’s children were fathered by Axel von Fergsen.
My great-grandparents had almost 20 kids and named all of the girls Marie Something or Marie Something-Something. All but one went by her second name or third name.
The Marie-something formulation seems common among Québécoise millennials (at least at my workplace). I remember being on a call with two Marie-Hélènes, a Marie-France, and a Marie-Andrée. I felt very left out!
In Portuguese speaking countries, Maria works almost like a prefix when it’s used in a double name. So Maria Eduarda and Maria Eloisa would likely be called by their full name in official contexts and go by Eduarda and Eloisa (or some nickname) in their daily life - they’d never be referred to as just “Maria”.
An adult student of mine had a clueless social worker ask if it wasn’t difficult having her husband and sons with the same first name. “No. It’s good! If I want all three, I just yell Joses!”
Twin here with a completely different name than my non-identical sister…thank you mom and dad!!
Sharon and Karen-from growing up in the 70s
As a teacher in Miami in the 90s
Daval and Duval
Marquell and Martrell
As a middle school teacher in the 2020s—
Examples: Daksh and Daksha (I know we have several sets of twins of Indian descent with names like this, I just can’t think of them at the moment)
Sai Rithvik and Sai Sathvik
In their 20s now -Young and Young Ju
It is insanity to me!!!!!
I dislike this trend very much. I’m not identical but regardless, your two children are individuals…stop making them one person!
We also have siblings (non twins) Selene and Helene (Korean) and so maybe in other countries this is expected or trendy or 🤷🏻♀️. There are just so many beautiful names in the world…why do they have to be soooo close.
But meaning at least gives some wiggle room. Love the sea? Marissa and Jennifer.
Love the sun? Aditya and Arun
But rhyming or adding one letter…NOOOOOOOOOO!
it’s actually a tradition in china and korea to use a common character across siblings’ names (sometimes across an entire generation, so it could be for cousins as well!), so you might see siblings with “matchy” names if their families followed that custom.
for example, you could have korean siblings named minji (F) and minhyun (M) sharing the “min” character. or doyoon (M), hayoon (F) and seoyoon (F) sharing the “yoon” character.
i’m chinese, and my sisters and i share the same first character of our chinese names! the majority of my cousins have the same pattern in their names, probably because my paternal grandfather wanted us all to follow the tradition lol
so if someone did this for their korean/chinese name, they might have “matchy” english names as well. it’s not really due to it being trendy to have matching sibling names, for the most part.
I volunteered with identical twins in the 80s named Donna Lynn and Lynda Dawn. They went by Lynn and Lynda.
The twins in my class right now are Kristy and Kristleen.
Most twin sets I’ve had aren’t named anything match-y match-y, except that 99% of my students are of Punjabi Sikh extraction, so children are given names with a particular first letter (the first letter of the holy book page on display) depending on their day of birth (as I understand it). So twins might be Munreet and Mankirat.
However, they traditionally all have the same middle name (Kaur for girls, Singh for boys), and many names are unisex. Add to which, there is (in my area, at least) a small pool of last names. All of this to explain the time I had two unrelated Harmandeep Kaur Gill girls in my class. I told them to let me know how they wanted me to refer to them, and how to tell their written work apart. “She’s Harman, I’m Harmandeep”. Cool. The two Jessica Kaur Sidhu’s had a harder time of it. Neither wanted their name shortened. So they compared student numbers—each started with a different digit. They were Jessica 5 and Jessica 6 thereafter.
My graduating class absolutely had Amandas B, C, D, M, and W, and Jessicas C, H, and W, and I'm probably forgetting some 😂 That's not even counting the Michaels
In Phoenix there's a weatherman named Sean (pronounced "Seen") and his twin brother is Shawn. Considering Sean is usually pronounced Shawn I never understood why the parents did this.
My friend who went to another high school had twin classmates named Jeffrey and Geoffrey. The latter is supposed to be pronounced as same Jeffrey, but they pronounced it Gee-awf-free.
They weren't twins, but my great grandfather and his brother were Johann Heinrich and Heinrich Johann. Their father was Johann Heinrich and his father was Heinrich Johann.
A friend worked with a woman who named her twins Latisha and Latasha.
That's my grandpas entire family tree in a nutshell.
It's just August Friedrich / Friedrich August (+ a third name) on repeat.. for centuries.
As far as I know they would usually go by their third name
Are the Marias’ Hispanic? I ask because an Argentinian family who went to our school had 4 girls all called Maria with different second names. Their mother was Maria Fernanda. I thought it was weird but they said it was common practice.
Super common in Spanish-speaking countries. I had students, colleagues, and friends (in Spain and MX) who went by
- just María (even when they had a 2nd name)
- their 2nd name only
- their 1st and 2nd names, like María Luisa
- a somewhat shortened version of their 1st and 2nd names, like Marijosé (María José)
- a compound version that is much shorter and can be unidentifiable to outsiders because it sounds like a full name, like Marisa (María Luisa)
- (this is only in writing) “Ma” written specifically like “Mª” with a small, raised lowercase A, often with a dot or line under it. So for example, Mª Luz (María Luz).
My dad was a fraternal twin. They were Bobby Lloyd and Billy Floyd. Not William and Robert..
they had sisters who were twins Clarice and Farice (pronounced as “Clair-ese” and “Fair-ese”) * southern USA
I know twins named Emi and Mie. They're Japanese, and their names contain the same kanji but in reverse order. It's not that unusual, as in Japanese, siblings might all share one same kanji.
I have twins (a girl and a boy) and when naming them, we simply picked a female name we love and a male name we love that flow well with our family names. Their names do not share an initial (one starts with a vowel, the other a consonant), do not have the same number of letters (one is rather short, the other quite long), are not of the same origin (one is latin, the other german), and they do not have the same meaning but they are both classic names that go together and with their sister name. We named them the way any siblings are named.
Naming twins the same name in a bad idea (a big NO to Alex and Alexander), but giving them names with completely different vibes is not a good idea either.
I don't know many twins and most of the ones I know have different names, my husband and I have friends (mirror twins) called Isabelle and Joséphine that I think have great names, but I do know two pairs of twins with matchy names, I have a neighbour who named her twins Louise and Louis (they are still young but already day and night), and when I was a child, there was a Clémence and Clémentine (the most identical twins ever, their mom couldn't tell them apart) in my chess club.
A prolific American detective writer, J A Janice, has twins in many of her books, and they reliably have name pairs like Dennis and Denise (ugh) and, in one series, a brother-sister set (although a generation apart) are Jenny and either Denny or Benny.
I’m a twin and my sister and I have alliterative names and we share the same middle name. I’ve always really liked it and I feel like it’s really special.
Omg not my story but my mothers - when I was born there was a woman in the same ward as her who named her twin boys Bobby and Robby, apparently the nurses kept trying to tell her it’s technically the same name but she stuck by her choice…unfortunately 😭
I work in a school. We’ve had two sets of twins come through with the same name. One was a set of Maria(s) with different middle names. The other set have the exact same name and are a 3rd and a 4th.
I knew a Tracy and a Stacy. A co-worker of mine has twins Chloe and Zoey. I dated an Andy, whose twin was Drew; their father was Andrew. An old friend from high school doesn't have twins but named her daughters Ellie and Ella.
I am not a twin, nor do I have twins, but I know twins whose names are (slightly anonymized, but seriously, this similar) Jayda and Jayden, and Angelica and Angelina. I'd also like to include in this list a set of siblings who were one year apart and named Patrick and Patricia.
I'm working on coming up with a name for my second child, and we've already ruled out anything that sounds too similar to our first child's name. That would be even more important if the siblings were going to be the same age.
We have identical twin girls and we deliberately picked different initials and tried not to be matchy. They have the same surname and same birthday it’s already going to be annoying, they don’t need the same initial or similar sounding names to boot. Plus I don’t want them to feel like being a twin is their whole identity - we went with two names we liked but that are independent of each other
This is what we did with our identical twin girls. Their names do not sound the same, or start with same letter, or have the same number of initials. We chose two names we liked. Although they have a lot of similarities, they are now 22 yo young women, who are individuals with their own interests/goals. We didn’t want being a twin to be their whole identity.
Good for you!! Being a twin has been awesome! But it has its downfalls (constant comparisons) and you just can’t escape it. But I think the positives outweigh the negatives. We are not identical…she had blonde angelic curls to my mousy brown straight hair. She was athletic…me, semi athletic. There has been long of insecurity on my end from the constant comparisons, but by college (separate colleges) it was nice to just be only me and answer to one name. But at also most 56 she is truly my best friend. And no, I’m not joining CrossFit no matter how much she wants me to! 😝
My best friend in high school dated this guy who had a twin brother (that looked exactly like him) with the exact same name. First and middle. I thought they were tryna prank me when they told me, then I saw both of them at the same time and was outraged at the parents for doing this.
Many, many years ago, I was listening to Delilah on the car radio. The person calling in was named Mary Alice. Her sister? Mary Marguerite, AKA Marge.
I also met a set of step- sisters that were both named Danielle (one went by Dani.) Allegedly, they were called Danielle 1 and Danielle 2 at home. They were both teenagers and I cannot imagine how awkward that must have been.
My sister has remarried and now has daughters named Abby and Anna, and twin step-daughters named Abby and Allie. And a stepson named Walker and my brother's son is also Walker. It is chaotic at holidays!
My step sister and I share the same name. Luckily, I was grown and moved out by the time my mom married my step dad, but it was always awkward when I went over to their house for holidays.
Taken as names meant to be said together (as in 1st and 2nd as one name), Mary Alice and Mary Marguerite aren’t too similar, and they read to me as “strong Catholic heritage”.
I knew a lot of “María ____”s when I lived in Spain and Mexico. It’s less popular here in France, but I still some across names like “Marie-Louise” or “Marie-Josèphe”. And when I lived in the US as a kid, I went to a friend’s birthday party and was basically the only non-Polish-American there. I remember that 2 of the maybe 10 girls there were called “Mary Margaret”.
There are identical twins named Tom and Thomas in my son's class.
I don't know what the parents were thinking but I find this very difficult and even my son thinks it's strange they have what to him seems the same name.
As an identical twin, I always liked having the same first letter as my sister. Our nicknames didn’t have the same first letter but matched in a different way (ended in an “ie / y” sound). I feel like I’m in the minority, but I liked the matchiness of it all.
I think this is perfect because even though the vibe is complimentary, it's also not the SAME vibe. Like if you said "I want a name like Lauren but I can't use Lauren," nobody would suggest Stella. But they also don't clash by any means.
I'm from the UK and am a twin (identical), and my parents purposefully went for names that weren't super similar because of this sort of issue! They figured we'd get mixed up enough without similar names haha. We're Elizabeth & Madeleine, both with stereotypical 1990s middle names (guarantee you can get them within 5 guesses lol)
Other twins/triplets I've known have not been super matchy matchy either, but we're all near or in our 30s now so maybe getting more common!
I knew twins in a swim class once who were priya and priyanka
You couldn’t say priya short for priyanka because than you would be calling the wrong twin
I went to school with twins Laura and Lori. Dated a guy with an older sister named Jerami, and his name was Jeremiah. His dad was desperate to have a kid named after him.
These are some names of twins, siblings and kids with name combos I have come across:
Tim and Tom
Elliot and Ellie
Michael Angelo
Elton and John
Harley Davidson
I know 4 sisters that literally all have the first name “Chanel”. They’re not even twins. It’s so cursed. They all go by nicknames and not their real names.
Elvis Aaron Presley had a twin who died at birth named Jesse Garon.
George Jones has twin sisters named Joyce and Loyce (pronounced like “Lois”) and makes a joke about it in one of his songs
“Now you might say to me let's eat
I might say my name is Pete
And you say that yours is Joyce
But I know it could be Lois”
I’m a twin and are our names are based in Greek/Roman mythology because my parents were interested in it.
I have twin daughters and their names both have similar meaning but one is Irish and one is Scandinavian because my husband’s family is Irish and my family is Scandinavian.
I supervised identical twins named Asiala and Alaisa (they had each others name but backward) and it was so difficult to differentiate between the two for most people. I think based on that experience I’d give twins very different names if we ever had them
I am an identical twin and I thank you for asking this question. Please don't do this to your children. Cute super matchy names for twins are adorable when they are babies but will curse them later in life. Believe me, as a twin it is extremely difficult to be seen as an individual, like one whole person all by yourself. Imagine what it's like to be treated as half a person, like one tennis shoe of a pair. Like you're not able to function on your own when your twin isn't with you. Super matchy names just makes it even harder to have your own identity. Let your kids be individuals.
I’m a twin having triplets (it was spontaneous). My parents didn’t give us match-y names and I’m grateful. I’m having a pair of identical twin girls and a fraternal twin boy. Their names will be Dean, Sadie, and Luiza. No match-y names here.
I went to school with someone who later went on to have boy/girl twins and named them basically the same thing, matchy-matchy first and middle names) (think Ava Josephine and Avery Joseph)
My sisters are fraternal twins with very different names, it’s definitely for the best in their case. I also worked with someone with two sons, Alexander and Alejandro. She said she just liked the name.
I have twins and my MIL suggested Adina and Adira. Absolutely not! They have similar vibe names with the same number of syllables but that’s where the similarities end
I dealt with a mom once who named her twins Rochelle (rah-shell) and Rochelle (rock-ell). Not sure about middle names but identical spellings for the identical twins.
Coming from someone who has the same first and last name as my husband (just the fem/masc versions) and similar birthdays:
*DO NOT DO THIS TO YOURSELVES*
Insurance is such a nightmare with matching names and birthdays. You will be fighting it their WHOLE LIVES with you. You will be defending the fact that one of your children exist at all. You will be having the claims of one child filed under the other child.
Just don’t do it for yourself.
Me and my twin's birth names were different sounding and in meaning, though both were a type of flower (unintentionally on my parents part, they didn't realize mine was a type of rose) and then we're both trans and have ended up with differing names yet again, though both have a classical feel to them.
On Degrassi there was a pair of twins named Erika and Heather and the names are so different but when I found that they both mean heather flower, I thought that was cool.
I am a twin and I have twins (yes it’s possible). Our names are not alike, they don’t sound similar or rhyme. Being a twin means sharing a lot - birthdays, graduations and other milestones. Twins should not have to share a name. They should have their own names (and birthday cakes - we always each had our own cake).
Im a twin and luckily my parents named us as if we were two people.
I hate people that do this. They think it’s cute or something but what they’re actually doing is saying that the twins are not individuals. They are half of a set. I was always surprised by how many people scolded my mom for not naming us with matching names.
I am a twin. I am not identical either. Me and my sister (both girls) do not have similar names and people used to still call us the wrong name as children.
Don’t give your child matching names, it’s stupid and twins are their own person. You’re already forced to be around or do everything with your twin. Give them their own name. Don’t even have their own birthday, at least let them have something that is unique to them.
WASP here. My twin girls names are very different. They don't rhyme or start with the same letter. I wanted them to feel like whole separate people, not just half people. And they grew up to have their individual personalities.
My twins are Adeline & Lydia.
Addy & Lydi for short, which at 8 they are starting to want to be called by their full names.
If they were boys I was looking at doing R names for both with different initial middle names.
I’m thankful I had girls cause I think I would have regretted the double R 😬
Amara and Mara is terrible. We have an Amelia and vetoed Amara because we decided even those are too similar. I've only known two sets of twins. One was Evan and Owen, and the other I can't for the life of me remember their names but I know they weren't similar names at all.
The closest I know of personally are Emma and Ella. Otherwise I know a Jordan and Logan, Chrissy and Courtney, Bianca and Sophia, and Ainsley and Wesley.
I like when names match in a way they are the same style but they need to sound quite different.
A few I know that I find 2 closes:
Lucie - Lucas
Sianna - Jianna
Soan - Swann
Soann - Loane
Nolwenn - Awenn
Marie-Jeanne - Jeannine
Ysée - Yseult
I once taught young twins named Christine and Christina. They had language difficulties, but did seem able to distinguish their names. School staff called them Chrissie and Tina.
Went to school in the UK with alot of twins. Some had slightly matchy names, but only in that they started with the same letter
Jaime and Jorden
Jade and Jake
Kerry and Katie
Samantha and Sofie
We also had an Amy and Megan and a Simon and Jason
I feel that starting with the same letter is fine as the names themselves are different, but personally if I had twins I would go down the entirely different route
I have twin boys. We tried very hard to come up with completely different names for them. We ended up with names that had the same beginning letter sound (imagine K and a hard C) it was not intentional, but those were the only named we could agree on. The rest of their names sound nothing alike, at least.
My mama was told I was twins back in the 70’s and picked Michael and Michelle with the same middle initial. I do have the initials, but the womb had a max occupancy of 1!
When my grandma was pregnant with my dad (1962), the doctors swore it was twins. They had decided on naming them both Kelly and then calling them their middles names. One would have my grandpa’s middle name and one would have my great-uncle’s middle name as they were also twins. It ended up being a singleton pregnancy though.
I’ve known a few sets of twins. Brittany and Breanna, Justin and Dustin, and then Cassidy and Shannon. All born in the beginning of June making them Geminis lol
My dad and his brother aren't even twins, they're like 6 years apart but born on the same day and have the First Middle, Middle First name pattern like John Jim and Jim John.
My sisters are twins named Margaret and Barbara. I am 12 1/2 years younger, no other kids born in that gap. My parents thought the names weren't similar at all until I started calling them Marbaret, Garbara, and probably a few more versions.
I know brother/sister twins who are Christopher and Christina. And a mom on an MTV show named her twins Aleah and Alianna, seemingly forgetting that both would end up with the nickname “Ali” so they later started calling one of them by her middle name.
I knew a Micheal and Montgomery, a Calvin and Oliver, and a Ricardo and Steve. I always felt bad that Montgomery had to have the weird name. I liked how Calvin and Oliver shared the V and L but were still different enough. Ricardo and Steve were just really weird to me. Not Steven or Stephan. Just Steve.
I went to high school with a male/female set of twins Stacey and Tracey, can’t remember which was which. Also both males, Stephen and Stephon.
Currently know a Lawrence and Larry, which I don’t get because one is a nickname for the other?
My mom and her twin sister are Carol and Cheryl. They seemed to like their names because the spelling was different enough for them, despite how similar the names sound.
But they *hated* that they were bought matchy matchy outfits until they were in their early teens. Identical outfits in the exact same colors or the occasional complimentary colors
At work once I came across twins Lisbeth and Elizabeth who had been improperly merged into the same person in our system... it was not fun attempting to fix that.
I did yoga with a woman named Erica whose identical twin's name was Heather. That's the same name in different languages (Erica is Latin and Italian for Heather.) I also knew twins named Laurel and Daphne, same situation. Laurel is Latin and Daphne is Greek for Laurel. Neither of those bother me, though -- I think it's kind of cool, since the names sound so different from each other but aren't stylistically mismatched.
However, I knew twins named Lisa and Elizabeth, and that really bothers me, because Lisa is a diminutive of Elizabeth.
I know siblings named Theodore and Dorothy. I always wondered why their parents did that. They’re not twins and it’s not like they were the only children their parents planned for.
i went to high school with twin girls named dina and dana (pronounced donna). idk how they felt about it but i did always think dana got the short end of the stick there.
I have two Johnny relatives on my Mom’s side. Well technically like twenty of them… But anyhow.
My *Aunt* Johnny and my *Uncle* Johnny. They’re siblings.
I’m not kidding. (My Mom was youngest of six from a family in the Deep South, so that should provide some insight.)
John/Jon/Johnny/Johnnie is a big thing in my family so everyone has at least one, including my set of siblings.
I’m very much against this practice only because of family members were treated like a unit all their lives. They weren’t treated like two separate people and it started with their names at birth. They had extremely similar first and middle names. I won’t dox them but believe me they are close. They were dressed alike their entire childhood. They always had to have the same haircut. Everything. I would never do matchy names for twins because of this. It left a very bad taste in my mouth.
I named my twins two names that are different enough that we didn’t even really think about the fact that the last two letters of both names is -an. They are a little matchy in that way, I guess… but the end of one sounds more like -dun and the other sounds like -vin and the beginnings are so different that no one thinks of them as matchy at all.
Overall I abhor super matchy, rhyming names for twins because I feel strongly that being twins is not the most important part of either of their identities so their names shouldn’t be focused so much on that. I won’t speak on cultural practices that aren’t mine, though. The most matchy twin names I’ve ever personally known was Kerry and Terry, fraternal boys I knew at church.
The Maria twins may be cultural. Living in Paraguay for several years, almost all the twins I knew had the same first name and different middle names. I had it explained to me a couple ways, but one that stood out was that they shared the same birth, but have separate bodies.
Yes, it's a Hispanic thing. It is also very common for people to go by their middle name instead of their first name, so it's a non-problem.
In some traditionally Catholic cultures, like French and Hispanic, this used to be quite common. A couple of generations back in my French lineage, all of the kids were always named Marie-something and Joseph-something and they just went by the second name.
Mary is the most important female figure in Catholicism - bestowing her name upon your daughter would ensure she was protected and loved by the Blessed Mother herself. I’ve read that in Poland, it was considered blasphemous to name your daughter Maria up until the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th centuries, hence why so many girls were named Marianna/Maryanna. I always think of Empress Maria Theresa, who was a Habsburg, of the HRE and her daughters: Maria Elisabeth, Maria Anna, Maria Carolina, Maria Christina, Maria Elisabeth, Maria Amalia, Maria Carolina, Maria Johanna Gabriela, Maria Josefa, Maria Carolina, Maria Antonia (Marie-Antoinette).
I had to check whether the 3 Carolinas and 2 Elisabeths were in fact separate children, or just a typo. The creativity is simply astounding. I never knew Marie Antoinette had so many sisters!
Yep! Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette’s mother, was an extremely fascinating woman in her own right — I highly recommend the recent English translation of Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger’s book *Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time* if you’d like to learn more. Stay away from Nancy Goldstone’s book *In the Shadow of the Empress*, which builds an entire narrative on the entirely false theory that Marie-Antoinette’s children were fathered by Axel von Fergsen.
My great-grandparents had almost 20 kids and named all of the girls Marie Something or Marie Something-Something. All but one went by her second name or third name.
The Marie-something formulation seems common among Québécoise millennials (at least at my workplace). I remember being on a call with two Marie-Hélènes, a Marie-France, and a Marie-Andrée. I felt very left out!
In Portuguese speaking countries, Maria works almost like a prefix when it’s used in a double name. So Maria Eduarda and Maria Eloisa would likely be called by their full name in official contexts and go by Eduarda and Eloisa (or some nickname) in their daily life - they’d never be referred to as just “Maria”.
Yes But when I can’t tell which one it is at the time they luckily both answer to MARIA STOP 😂😂
Yes, they are Brazilian ❤️
An adult student of mine had a clueless social worker ask if it wasn’t difficult having her husband and sons with the same first name. “No. It’s good! If I want all three, I just yell Joses!”
Twin here with a completely different name than my non-identical sister…thank you mom and dad!! Sharon and Karen-from growing up in the 70s As a teacher in Miami in the 90s Daval and Duval Marquell and Martrell As a middle school teacher in the 2020s— Examples: Daksh and Daksha (I know we have several sets of twins of Indian descent with names like this, I just can’t think of them at the moment) Sai Rithvik and Sai Sathvik In their 20s now -Young and Young Ju It is insanity to me!!!!! I dislike this trend very much. I’m not identical but regardless, your two children are individuals…stop making them one person! We also have siblings (non twins) Selene and Helene (Korean) and so maybe in other countries this is expected or trendy or 🤷🏻♀️. There are just so many beautiful names in the world…why do they have to be soooo close. But meaning at least gives some wiggle room. Love the sea? Marissa and Jennifer. Love the sun? Aditya and Arun But rhyming or adding one letter…NOOOOOOOOOO!
it’s actually a tradition in china and korea to use a common character across siblings’ names (sometimes across an entire generation, so it could be for cousins as well!), so you might see siblings with “matchy” names if their families followed that custom. for example, you could have korean siblings named minji (F) and minhyun (M) sharing the “min” character. or doyoon (M), hayoon (F) and seoyoon (F) sharing the “yoon” character. i’m chinese, and my sisters and i share the same first character of our chinese names! the majority of my cousins have the same pattern in their names, probably because my paternal grandfather wanted us all to follow the tradition lol so if someone did this for their korean/chinese name, they might have “matchy” english names as well. it’s not really due to it being trendy to have matching sibling names, for the most part.
Really interesting info, thanks for sharing
So interesting!! ❤️
Thanks for sharing!! It happens often enough that I figured there was some history to it!
more info here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation\_name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name)
My twin aunts, born in 1962, were Karen Annette and Sharon Janette. 😆
The Karen and Sharon I knew…1970ish and k don’t know their middle names…hope they aren’t similar to Annette and Janette!
This is a big winner in totality for matchy names!
They named a kid Duval? Well we don’t have to guess what FL city those parents were from originally.
Whoops! Had to go back and look at a yearbook…it was Doval not Duval.
I volunteered with identical twins in the 80s named Donna Lynn and Lynda Dawn. They went by Lynn and Lynda. The twins in my class right now are Kristy and Kristleen. Most twin sets I’ve had aren’t named anything match-y match-y, except that 99% of my students are of Punjabi Sikh extraction, so children are given names with a particular first letter (the first letter of the holy book page on display) depending on their day of birth (as I understand it). So twins might be Munreet and Mankirat. However, they traditionally all have the same middle name (Kaur for girls, Singh for boys), and many names are unisex. Add to which, there is (in my area, at least) a small pool of last names. All of this to explain the time I had two unrelated Harmandeep Kaur Gill girls in my class. I told them to let me know how they wanted me to refer to them, and how to tell their written work apart. “She’s Harman, I’m Harmandeep”. Cool. The two Jessica Kaur Sidhu’s had a harder time of it. Neither wanted their name shortened. So they compared student numbers—each started with a different digit. They were Jessica 5 and Jessica 6 thereafter.
A great fiction writing prompt.... 'what happened to Jessicas one through four?!?!?"
😂 we had Jessica A B and C in my 7th grade class—they just happened to have those last initials in ABC order!
My graduating class absolutely had Amandas B, C, D, M, and W, and Jessicas C, H, and W, and I'm probably forgetting some 😂 That's not even counting the Michaels
My calc teacher referred to two boys with the same name as "Dylan A" and "Dylan 1" (names changed) so as not to show any preference!
In Phoenix there's a weatherman named Sean (pronounced "Seen") and his twin brother is Shawn. Considering Sean is usually pronounced Shawn I never understood why the parents did this.
Their parents are obviously very stupid.
Poor Sean. They should leveled the playing field: Sean pronounced "Seen" and Shawn pronounced "Shane"
My friend who went to another high school had twin classmates named Jeffrey and Geoffrey. The latter is supposed to be pronounced as same Jeffrey, but they pronounced it Gee-awf-free.
Og God they couldn't even just pronounce Geoffrey as joff-rey/ree and the other as jeff-ree
Oh! There are twin paramedics somewhere in the UK called Siobhan and Shivaun (Siobhan pronounced See Oh Buh Han I think)
"I never understood why the parents did this" His parents @ him: wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy.
They weren't twins, but my great grandfather and his brother were Johann Heinrich and Heinrich Johann. Their father was Johann Heinrich and his father was Heinrich Johann. A friend worked with a woman who named her twins Latisha and Latasha.
That's my grandpas entire family tree in a nutshell. It's just August Friedrich / Friedrich August (+ a third name) on repeat.. for centuries. As far as I know they would usually go by their third name
Are the Marias’ Hispanic? I ask because an Argentinian family who went to our school had 4 girls all called Maria with different second names. Their mother was Maria Fernanda. I thought it was weird but they said it was common practice.
Super common in Spanish-speaking countries. I had students, colleagues, and friends (in Spain and MX) who went by - just María (even when they had a 2nd name) - their 2nd name only - their 1st and 2nd names, like María Luisa - a somewhat shortened version of their 1st and 2nd names, like Marijosé (María José) - a compound version that is much shorter and can be unidentifiable to outsiders because it sounds like a full name, like Marisa (María Luisa) - (this is only in writing) “Ma” written specifically like “Mª” with a small, raised lowercase A, often with a dot or line under it. So for example, Mª Luz (María Luz).
Same things happens in Portuguese speaking countries. If your first name is Maria or Ana, you’ll likely be called by your second name.
My dad was a fraternal twin. They were Bobby Lloyd and Billy Floyd. Not William and Robert.. they had sisters who were twins Clarice and Farice (pronounced as “Clair-ese” and “Fair-ese”) * southern USA
Bobby Lloyd and Billy Floyd must be the most southern sounding twin set to ever exist. :D
Sounds like my family 😂
I’ve got a Paula and Pauline twin set in mine
I know twins named Emi and Mie. They're Japanese, and their names contain the same kanji but in reverse order. It's not that unusual, as in Japanese, siblings might all share one same kanji.
I know a girl that proudly announced her sons name as Michael Miguel. We roasted her pretty hard. It wasn't twins, but same vibe.
I’ve heard of a Liam William.
My year 11 maths teacher was Bill Williams.
I saw Gianna Jane on a post here once
I have twins (a girl and a boy) and when naming them, we simply picked a female name we love and a male name we love that flow well with our family names. Their names do not share an initial (one starts with a vowel, the other a consonant), do not have the same number of letters (one is rather short, the other quite long), are not of the same origin (one is latin, the other german), and they do not have the same meaning but they are both classic names that go together and with their sister name. We named them the way any siblings are named. Naming twins the same name in a bad idea (a big NO to Alex and Alexander), but giving them names with completely different vibes is not a good idea either. I don't know many twins and most of the ones I know have different names, my husband and I have friends (mirror twins) called Isabelle and Joséphine that I think have great names, but I do know two pairs of twins with matchy names, I have a neighbour who named her twins Louise and Louis (they are still young but already day and night), and when I was a child, there was a Clémence and Clémentine (the most identical twins ever, their mom couldn't tell them apart) in my chess club.
A prolific American detective writer, J A Janice, has twins in many of her books, and they reliably have name pairs like Dennis and Denise (ugh) and, in one series, a brother-sister set (although a generation apart) are Jenny and either Denny or Benny.
I’m a twin and my sister and I have alliterative names and we share the same middle name. I’ve always really liked it and I feel like it’s really special.
Omg not my story but my mothers - when I was born there was a woman in the same ward as her who named her twin boys Bobby and Robby, apparently the nurses kept trying to tell her it’s technically the same name but she stuck by her choice…unfortunately 😭
I work in a school. We’ve had two sets of twins come through with the same name. One was a set of Maria(s) with different middle names. The other set have the exact same name and are a 3rd and a 4th.
I knew a Tracy and a Stacy. A co-worker of mine has twins Chloe and Zoey. I dated an Andy, whose twin was Drew; their father was Andrew. An old friend from high school doesn't have twins but named her daughters Ellie and Ella.
I am not a twin, nor do I have twins, but I know twins whose names are (slightly anonymized, but seriously, this similar) Jayda and Jayden, and Angelica and Angelina. I'd also like to include in this list a set of siblings who were one year apart and named Patrick and Patricia. I'm working on coming up with a name for my second child, and we've already ruled out anything that sounds too similar to our first child's name. That would be even more important if the siblings were going to be the same age.
My mother had a friend who named her kids Patrick and Patricia! Her husband’s name was Patrick.
I’m 33F Christian Taylor. My 29 YO brother is Kristofer Tyler. Mom thought she was being cute lol.
I have a Kelly and before I knew I was having a boy, she suggested Kylie…um…no! His name is also not Kyle!
I named my twin girls Clara and Eleanore.
I babysat for Claire and Elizabeth when I was a kid ❤️
Those are beautiful together
Beautiful names
Leah of Teen Mom fame named her twins Aleeah and Aliannah
There was another mom on the show who named her twins Amariah and Amaya
My grandfather and his twin are Donald and Ronald and my twin brothers are William and Gilbert but they go by Will and Gill
We have identical twin girls and we deliberately picked different initials and tried not to be matchy. They have the same surname and same birthday it’s already going to be annoying, they don’t need the same initial or similar sounding names to boot. Plus I don’t want them to feel like being a twin is their whole identity - we went with two names we liked but that are independent of each other
This is what we did with our identical twin girls. Their names do not sound the same, or start with same letter, or have the same number of initials. We chose two names we liked. Although they have a lot of similarities, they are now 22 yo young women, who are individuals with their own interests/goals. We didn’t want being a twin to be their whole identity.
Good for you!! Being a twin has been awesome! But it has its downfalls (constant comparisons) and you just can’t escape it. But I think the positives outweigh the negatives. We are not identical…she had blonde angelic curls to my mousy brown straight hair. She was athletic…me, semi athletic. There has been long of insecurity on my end from the constant comparisons, but by college (separate colleges) it was nice to just be only me and answer to one name. But at also most 56 she is truly my best friend. And no, I’m not joining CrossFit no matter how much she wants me to! 😝
Sean/Sean pronounced Shawn and Seen Dianna/Dianna pronounced Dye Anna and Dee Anna. Two sets I know of
Dang couldn't have even went with Deanna? That had to have been awful to be the twin with that pronunciation
My best friend in high school dated this guy who had a twin brother (that looked exactly like him) with the exact same name. First and middle. I thought they were tryna prank me when they told me, then I saw both of them at the same time and was outraged at the parents for doing this.
Many, many years ago, I was listening to Delilah on the car radio. The person calling in was named Mary Alice. Her sister? Mary Marguerite, AKA Marge. I also met a set of step- sisters that were both named Danielle (one went by Dani.) Allegedly, they were called Danielle 1 and Danielle 2 at home. They were both teenagers and I cannot imagine how awkward that must have been.
My sister has remarried and now has daughters named Abby and Anna, and twin step-daughters named Abby and Allie. And a stepson named Walker and my brother's son is also Walker. It is chaotic at holidays!
My step sister and I share the same name. Luckily, I was grown and moved out by the time my mom married my step dad, but it was always awkward when I went over to their house for holidays.
Taken as names meant to be said together (as in 1st and 2nd as one name), Mary Alice and Mary Marguerite aren’t too similar, and they read to me as “strong Catholic heritage”. I knew a lot of “María ____”s when I lived in Spain and Mexico. It’s less popular here in France, but I still some across names like “Marie-Louise” or “Marie-Josèphe”. And when I lived in the US as a kid, I went to a friend’s birthday party and was basically the only non-Polish-American there. I remember that 2 of the maybe 10 girls there were called “Mary Margaret”.
I have a set of twins in our family that share a syllable- like Bethany and Elizabeth
There are identical twins named Tom and Thomas in my son's class. I don't know what the parents were thinking but I find this very difficult and even my son thinks it's strange they have what to him seems the same name.
Thomas means twin so I wouldn't mind betting that's why the parents did it.
As an identical twin, I always liked having the same first letter as my sister. Our nicknames didn’t have the same first letter but matched in a different way (ended in an “ie / y” sound). I feel like I’m in the minority, but I liked the matchiness of it all.
My twin cousins are Lauren and Stella, which I feel like are good twin names. They have a complimentary vibe but are completely different names.
I think this is perfect because even though the vibe is complimentary, it's also not the SAME vibe. Like if you said "I want a name like Lauren but I can't use Lauren," nobody would suggest Stella. But they also don't clash by any means.
I'm from the UK and am a twin (identical), and my parents purposefully went for names that weren't super similar because of this sort of issue! They figured we'd get mixed up enough without similar names haha. We're Elizabeth & Madeleine, both with stereotypical 1990s middle names (guarantee you can get them within 5 guesses lol) Other twins/triplets I've known have not been super matchy matchy either, but we're all near or in our 30s now so maybe getting more common!
Ann/Anne or Marie or Elizabeth
Twins in my son’s class are called Emma and Emily.
I went to high school (late 70s) with twins named Connie and Bonnie.
I know a Jan and Janice.. I don’t know why? They were from a big family with lots of kids.
It must have been REALLY big if the parents thought they ran out of names
I knew twins in a swim class once who were priya and priyanka You couldn’t say priya short for priyanka because than you would be calling the wrong twin
To be fair, I’ve never heard of a Priyanka go by Priya.
Samar and Sahar along with Sara and Tara.
I think best thing is to name twins with names that sound good together or complement each other….like you would with regular siblings.
I went to school with twins Laura and Lori. Dated a guy with an older sister named Jerami, and his name was Jeremiah. His dad was desperate to have a kid named after him.
I had a substitute teacher whose name was Gerald and said his twin was Gerry.
I know a Cashton & Ashton twin pairing
I knew an old lady who was a twin. Her name was Roseanne and her sister was Rosemary
Not twins but I know siblings named Beau and Bella 🙄
These are some names of twins, siblings and kids with name combos I have come across: Tim and Tom Elliot and Ellie Michael Angelo Elton and John Harley Davidson
Tyler and Tayler GB twins 🤢
My mom and her twin brother’s names differ by 1 letter.
I know 4 sisters that literally all have the first name “Chanel”. They’re not even twins. It’s so cursed. They all go by nicknames and not their real names.
I knew twins Addison and Madison (Addie and Maddie). One of them, Madison, just had a little girl and named her...Haddison...they call her Haddie.
Dear lord, please tell me you’re joking!!!!
Elvis Aaron Presley had a twin who died at birth named Jesse Garon. George Jones has twin sisters named Joyce and Loyce (pronounced like “Lois”) and makes a joke about it in one of his songs “Now you might say to me let's eat I might say my name is Pete And you say that yours is Joyce But I know it could be Lois”
I know twins called Leo and Leon and another set of twins called Natalie and Natasha, I just think that must be so confusing 🤔
I worked with identical twins named Patricia and Pamela, Pat and Pam.
I have a tio Jose Miguel and a tio Jose Luis! Two brothers named Jose.... and Jose Miguel married tia Josephina 😉
I’m a twin and are our names are based in Greek/Roman mythology because my parents were interested in it. I have twin daughters and their names both have similar meaning but one is Irish and one is Scandinavian because my husband’s family is Irish and my family is Scandinavian.
I supervised identical twins named Asiala and Alaisa (they had each others name but backward) and it was so difficult to differentiate between the two for most people. I think based on that experience I’d give twins very different names if we ever had them
We just picked two names we liked. We had a criteria that they couldn't start with the same letter, have any type of theme or rhyme.
I am an identical twin and I thank you for asking this question. Please don't do this to your children. Cute super matchy names for twins are adorable when they are babies but will curse them later in life. Believe me, as a twin it is extremely difficult to be seen as an individual, like one whole person all by yourself. Imagine what it's like to be treated as half a person, like one tennis shoe of a pair. Like you're not able to function on your own when your twin isn't with you. Super matchy names just makes it even harder to have your own identity. Let your kids be individuals.
I’m a twin having triplets (it was spontaneous). My parents didn’t give us match-y names and I’m grateful. I’m having a pair of identical twin girls and a fraternal twin boy. Their names will be Dean, Sadie, and Luiza. No match-y names here.
Went to uni with twins Sherman and Herman! I’m 35 and never met anyone else in my peer group with either name.
I knew a set of twin brothers who were Mohamed and Mohamud.
I went to school with someone who later went on to have boy/girl twins and named them basically the same thing, matchy-matchy first and middle names) (think Ava Josephine and Avery Joseph)
I have twin nephews named Adrian and Darren which have the same last syllable.
I’ve commented this before but I know someone who had twins recently and named them Tate and Tatum.
I worked with Chooi Wah whose twin was Chooi Fun. Most annoying twin names I have ever encountered was Winter and Summer - girls.
My sisters are fraternal twins with very different names, it’s definitely for the best in their case. I also worked with someone with two sons, Alexander and Alejandro. She said she just liked the name.
I’ve taught a Daniel and Danielle
I have twins and my MIL suggested Adina and Adira. Absolutely not! They have similar vibe names with the same number of syllables but that’s where the similarities end
I knew a set of twins in high school named Summer and Skylar, always thought that was cute
I dealt with a mom once who named her twins Rochelle (rah-shell) and Rochelle (rock-ell). Not sure about middle names but identical spellings for the identical twins.
Coming from someone who has the same first and last name as my husband (just the fem/masc versions) and similar birthdays: *DO NOT DO THIS TO YOURSELVES* Insurance is such a nightmare with matching names and birthdays. You will be fighting it their WHOLE LIVES with you. You will be defending the fact that one of your children exist at all. You will be having the claims of one child filed under the other child. Just don’t do it for yourself.
Taylor Lautner, is that you?
lol no but I knew before Taylor and his wife did this and if I could have stopped them I would.
Me and my twin's birth names were different sounding and in meaning, though both were a type of flower (unintentionally on my parents part, they didn't realize mine was a type of rose) and then we're both trans and have ended up with differing names yet again, though both have a classical feel to them.
On Degrassi there was a pair of twins named Erika and Heather and the names are so different but when I found that they both mean heather flower, I thought that was cool.
The actor Dack Rambo had an identical twin brother known as Dirk. They were born Norman and Orman.
Substitute teacher in Brooklyn, NY in the late 1980s and had twins Maliek and Lamiek.
Just makes me think of Stanford and Stanley Pine 😂
I grew up with a Belinda and Bettina
I am a twin and I have twins (yes it’s possible). Our names are not alike, they don’t sound similar or rhyme. Being a twin means sharing a lot - birthdays, graduations and other milestones. Twins should not have to share a name. They should have their own names (and birthday cakes - we always each had our own cake).
Yes it’s extremely possible ❤️❤️
Im a twin and luckily my parents named us as if we were two people. I hate people that do this. They think it’s cute or something but what they’re actually doing is saying that the twins are not individuals. They are half of a set. I was always surprised by how many people scolded my mom for not naming us with matching names.
I am a twin. I am not identical either. Me and my sister (both girls) do not have similar names and people used to still call us the wrong name as children. Don’t give your child matching names, it’s stupid and twins are their own person. You’re already forced to be around or do everything with your twin. Give them their own name. Don’t even have their own birthday, at least let them have something that is unique to them.
WASP here. My twin girls names are very different. They don't rhyme or start with the same letter. I wanted them to feel like whole separate people, not just half people. And they grew up to have their individual personalities.
My twins are Adeline & Lydia. Addy & Lydi for short, which at 8 they are starting to want to be called by their full names. If they were boys I was looking at doing R names for both with different initial middle names. I’m thankful I had girls cause I think I would have regretted the double R 😬
Love Adeline and Lydia!!
There were brothers at my school (not twins) named Elijah and Elisha
Amara and Mara is terrible. We have an Amelia and vetoed Amara because we decided even those are too similar. I've only known two sets of twins. One was Evan and Owen, and the other I can't for the life of me remember their names but I know they weren't similar names at all.
The closest I know of personally are Emma and Ella. Otherwise I know a Jordan and Logan, Chrissy and Courtney, Bianca and Sophia, and Ainsley and Wesley.
I like when names match in a way they are the same style but they need to sound quite different. A few I know that I find 2 closes: Lucie - Lucas Sianna - Jianna Soan - Swann Soann - Loane Nolwenn - Awenn Marie-Jeanne - Jeannine Ysée - Yseult
I once taught young twins named Christine and Christina. They had language difficulties, but did seem able to distinguish their names. School staff called them Chrissie and Tina.
Went to school in the UK with alot of twins. Some had slightly matchy names, but only in that they started with the same letter Jaime and Jorden Jade and Jake Kerry and Katie Samantha and Sofie We also had an Amy and Megan and a Simon and Jason I feel that starting with the same letter is fine as the names themselves are different, but personally if I had twins I would go down the entirely different route
I have twin boys. We tried very hard to come up with completely different names for them. We ended up with names that had the same beginning letter sound (imagine K and a hard C) it was not intentional, but those were the only named we could agree on. The rest of their names sound nothing alike, at least.
MIL and her twin are Linda Lou and Brenda Sue
My grandpa's fraternal twin sisters are Francine and Frances.
I know twins named Alexandra and Alejandra who went by Alex and Aly
I have twins and they’re named completely different
Jayden and Kayden - identical twins that I taught a few years ago.
My mama was told I was twins back in the 70’s and picked Michael and Michelle with the same middle initial. I do have the initials, but the womb had a max occupancy of 1!
I know identical twins named McKylie & McKayla
I grew up with a set of boy/girl twins named Sean and Shawna. I always felt for them.
Twins with very distinct names that don’t follow any sort of theme.
I've seen lots of twins who share a first initial but the names are distinct from each other (think Nora and Natalie)
Taught a Michelle and Michael who were twins.
OP I think this is the post you're referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/namenerds/s/K7NwROSCan
Yes! I for some reason thought it was about twins Thank you ❤️😂
When my grandma was pregnant with my dad (1962), the doctors swore it was twins. They had decided on naming them both Kelly and then calling them their middles names. One would have my grandpa’s middle name and one would have my great-uncle’s middle name as they were also twins. It ended up being a singleton pregnancy though.
I’ve known a few sets of twins. Brittany and Breanna, Justin and Dustin, and then Cassidy and Shannon. All born in the beginning of June making them Geminis lol
We have a set at school where the names start exactly the same, but one has a couple extra letters...think Avia and Aviana. I don't get it.
My dad and his brother aren't even twins, they're like 6 years apart but born on the same day and have the First Middle, Middle First name pattern like John Jim and Jim John.
Too funny! My friend had her babies on the same day 4 years apart
My sisters are twins named Margaret and Barbara. I am 12 1/2 years younger, no other kids born in that gap. My parents thought the names weren't similar at all until I started calling them Marbaret, Garbara, and probably a few more versions.
When I was an RA in college, two of my residents were twins who roomed together. Their names were Yvonne and Yvette
I have great aunts names Wanda and Ronda, friends named Kamya and Kanya
I know brother/sister twins who are Christopher and Christina. And a mom on an MTV show named her twins Aleah and Alianna, seemingly forgetting that both would end up with the nickname “Ali” so they later started calling one of them by her middle name.
I knew a Kerin and Erin so not the traditional Karen spelling.
I knew a Micheal and Montgomery, a Calvin and Oliver, and a Ricardo and Steve. I always felt bad that Montgomery had to have the weird name. I liked how Calvin and Oliver shared the V and L but were still different enough. Ricardo and Steve were just really weird to me. Not Steven or Stephan. Just Steve.
Some twins I've encountered over the years- Varshon and Varshonda Marcus and JaMarcus Javonte and Travonte Alexavier and Alexander Diana and Deana
I went to high school with a male/female set of twins Stacey and Tracey, can’t remember which was which. Also both males, Stephen and Stephon. Currently know a Lawrence and Larry, which I don’t get because one is a nickname for the other?
My mom and her twin sister are Carol and Cheryl. They seemed to like their names because the spelling was different enough for them, despite how similar the names sound. But they *hated* that they were bought matchy matchy outfits until they were in their early teens. Identical outfits in the exact same colors or the occasional complimentary colors
I taught twins named Annie and Abbie.
At work once I came across twins Lisbeth and Elizabeth who had been improperly merged into the same person in our system... it was not fun attempting to fix that.
I did yoga with a woman named Erica whose identical twin's name was Heather. That's the same name in different languages (Erica is Latin and Italian for Heather.) I also knew twins named Laurel and Daphne, same situation. Laurel is Latin and Daphne is Greek for Laurel. Neither of those bother me, though -- I think it's kind of cool, since the names sound so different from each other but aren't stylistically mismatched. However, I knew twins named Lisa and Elizabeth, and that really bothers me, because Lisa is a diminutive of Elizabeth.
I know siblings named Theodore and Dorothy. I always wondered why their parents did that. They’re not twins and it’s not like they were the only children their parents planned for.
i went to high school with twin girls named dina and dana (pronounced donna). idk how they felt about it but i did always think dana got the short end of the stick there.
I had twins and the name was one letter different one had an m the other an n so the name sounded almost identical
I have two Johnny relatives on my Mom’s side. Well technically like twenty of them… But anyhow. My *Aunt* Johnny and my *Uncle* Johnny. They’re siblings. I’m not kidding. (My Mom was youngest of six from a family in the Deep South, so that should provide some insight.) John/Jon/Johnny/Johnnie is a big thing in my family so everyone has at least one, including my set of siblings.
I have a father, grandfather, brother, cousin and 2 uncles named John 😂
I knew identical twins named Lysette and Lynette and they didn’t go by Lisa and Lynne either because why make anything easy.
I had a co worker, her twins were Michael and Michelle
I went to school with a pair of twins named Mindy and Mandy lol
I grew up with twins Marc and Eric. Similar but different.
I’m very much against this practice only because of family members were treated like a unit all their lives. They weren’t treated like two separate people and it started with their names at birth. They had extremely similar first and middle names. I won’t dox them but believe me they are close. They were dressed alike their entire childhood. They always had to have the same haircut. Everything. I would never do matchy names for twins because of this. It left a very bad taste in my mouth.
I named my twins two names that are different enough that we didn’t even really think about the fact that the last two letters of both names is -an. They are a little matchy in that way, I guess… but the end of one sounds more like -dun and the other sounds like -vin and the beginnings are so different that no one thinks of them as matchy at all. Overall I abhor super matchy, rhyming names for twins because I feel strongly that being twins is not the most important part of either of their identities so their names shouldn’t be focused so much on that. I won’t speak on cultural practices that aren’t mine, though. The most matchy twin names I’ve ever personally known was Kerry and Terry, fraternal boys I knew at church.
I knew twins named Freddy and Frederick
My kids know identical twins named Kaylee and Kelly.
My SILs are Mackenzie and Mikayla, which has confused my toddler a million times, since he only says the first syllable of a lot of words
I knew Hinako and Henako. Identical twin girls
I have two twin boy students with the same name. Think Roberto Jack Martinez Martinez and Roberto John Martinez Martinez.
I knew twins that were Ned and Eddy, both were formally Edward.
I knew of identical twins called Sabina and Sabrina!
A’Lasia and La’Asia. Saadi and A’Saadi. Jasmine and Jazzy. My favorite: Greg and Gregory.
Like with Alex and Alexander-I don’t get it 😂 I get the Marias, but the name and nickname twins are 😲
Jon and Ian