Naming Twins

Everyone,

The question of the week over at the Multiples and More blog is all about names! 

How did you choose your multiples' names?

 

This was a hot topic in our house before we even had kids.  I think one night Juice and I sat down and wrote out 3 girl names and 3 boy names that we really liked and wrote them on little sheets of paper.  We put them in the filing cabinet and would laugh at them every time we pulled them out.  Sometimes we would like others and would be moved to the top of the list.  But it was always the same names.  

 

When we got pregnant with Butterfly, our current favorite name was one I wasn't willing to use.  It was Virginia and I was going to call her Ginny.  However, I didn't want her name and the state she was born in to be the same.  So we pulled out the old list and looked over our girl names.  Juice didn't like my top pick (Cassandra) because it sounded like cassarole to him.  We were down to our last girls name that we both liked and it seemed to fit.  Her middle name is her aunt's middle name and I think it goes well together.  Her internet name I picked because that's what her name means.  If she was going to be a boy she was going to be Pirate's name.

 

While we were trying to have the boys, we had a few name discussions about girl names.  If we ended up with a boy, we had a name set in stone.  No questions asked, that was going to be our boy's name.  So when we found out we were having twins and would have to come up with 2 names, I was very excited.  I love hearing people's name choices and seeing what the top 100 names are in the nation every year.  We had one boy name picked out.  I wanted to pick out 2 girl names and one other boy name.  On the car ride home from the ultrasound, we started talking names.  We talked for maybe 20 minutes and ended up both sulking on either side of our car.  He hated all the names I liked.  I thought his rules for names were stupid.  He didn't like the sound of some and I hated the one girl name that he liked.  It seems we were at an impasse. 

 

Over the next several weeks, ever time we talked about it, we fought.  We could not come to a common ground over it.  We finally had to put a ban on talking about names until we knew if they were boys or girls.  

 

Turns out the twins were boys!  Yay we already had a boy name picked out.  Now we just needed another.  Butterfly's name and Pirate's name were alphabetical.  So we were joking around with another name that started with the next letter.  I think we were watching a movie with his name in it.  I turned to Juice and said, "What about Professor?"  He said, "I like it."  Done.  Pirate's middle name is my dad's name, and Professor's middle name is Juice's grandpa's name and one of my favorite names.  Juice says that there was a reason we could never pick girl names...they were not girls!  Some girl names we did consider (but are no longer considering) were Sabrina, Sierra, Cassandra (still with the cassarole comment), Willow, and Aurora (the one name Juice liked).  We never had any back up boy names.  

 

Their internet names came from the movies they were named after.  We are a little geeky.

 

Here's the rest of the questions: 

• Did you stick with family names?  
• Only for middle names.  I like family middle names.
  
• How do you feel about "matchy" names? 
• "Matchy"names are great for some, but not for us.
  
• Did you worry about their names "coordinating?" 
• Yes I did, but only alphabetically.  I wanted everyone in our family to have their own initials.
  
• Did you name your babies before you met them, or wait until you saw them to assign names?
• We named our babies before we met them on the basis of their birth order.  Again, with the alphabetical thing.  We figured Baby A would come out first so his name would be Pirate.  Which left Baby B to be Professor.  But we didn't assign them names until they did actually come out.
  
• What were your second choices? 
• See above.
  
• Did you consider the popularity of a name as a deciding factor?
• Not really.  We liked the names we liked and were going to use them.  Granted, they are not very popular names (at all) so I guess this was never an issue.

Check out the Multiples and More blog for more name discussions!


Safire