Choosing Names for Twins

Naming children seems like such an easy task, right? Well, what about naming two kids at the same time? Logically, this seems even easier: two parents with two opinions equals each parent naming one baby! Easy, peasy. If only this were true. We asked our Twiniversity community how they chose names for their twins, and their answers do not disappoint!

I named my kids when I was 11 years old, and luckily, when I met my husband 12 years later, he was on board. But maybe you don’t have names you’ve stashed away for 20 years (most people do not), so how do others decide on names for your twins?

We recently asked our Twiniversity community, “How did you decide on names for your twins?” Based on the answers, I think it is safe to say that when you are naming multiple babies, sometimes you have to get creative!

Split the responsibility

• My husband picked one and I picked the other, but we also had to agree with each other’s choices. – Allegra S. Keller

• My husband and I both named one child. We couldn’t agree on names but we each had a first choice and the other person was ok with the name but didn’t love it. So we found out they were twins so we both name one child with our first choices. -Amber Warren

• I chose one name and my husband the other one, we didn’t want matching names or middle names. -Mayte Gamoneda

• My husband named baby A I named Baby B. Zac is baby A. Dylan is baby B. -Brandie Lee Sopko

• I picked one, husbs picked one, I put a lot of time on Calvin, I’d been asking for days as the time was getting closer, he had some buddy’s I’ve for a poker game when I had asked one more time and he blurred out “aces!” I said, “oh game over and tossed him the baby name book, 1st page 3 names down was the name ACE, lol it took him a 10th of a second and he said “see, it’s the universe!” -Carrie Widdison Vander Meide

• We couldn’t agree on even one name. So he took baby A and I took baby B. No vetos allowed! We gave ourselves 3 weeks to decide before we told each other. -Kelsie Longardner

• My husband and I each picked a name! -Michelle Monsef

• We both chose 1 name for our boys and then Twin A got the name that comes first in the alphabet and twin B got the other name. Their middle names are named after our dads. -Ashley Cudia

• I had a girl name I really wanted to use and dad had a boy name. So we swapped for middle names and gave them a family name from both sides then waited until we met them to make it official . -Destiiny Marlene

• I chose our daughter’s first name and my husband chose our son’s first name (from my short list). Their middle names are meaningful family names. My husband and his dad both have the middle name Lee and so we used the same middle name for our twin son. My husband’s mother passed away when he was a teenager. She actually went by her middle name, Kay. So we combined Kay and Lee for our twin daughter’s middle name, Kaylee. -Elizabeth Strain

• We each picked one first name and then swapped family names for middle names so one child has a name Dad picked with mom’s family middle name, and the opposite for the other. -Ashley Essex

• When we learned that it was a boy and a girl, my husband suggested he name the boy, and I name the girl. He picked Zachary. I tried to find a Z girl’s name, but nothing worked. Then I thought about an A name. (I’d have A-Z). But still, nothing felt right. I started looking at family names next. My mom’s middle name is Hilda. My mother-in-law’s middle name is Ann. So I combined them with her twin (ary part) and came up with Hillary Ann. I also used 2 Ls so they have the same number of letters in their first names. It took me a long time, but I think I figured it out well. (PS No, I did not name her after Hillary Clinton. They were born before they were in the White House. It was a unique name then) -Christine Solomon Smith

• I named our daughter, so my husband named our son’s! One is a JR, & the other name he’s ALWAYS liked & wanted to have a brother with that name lol now he has a son! -Jessica Rupert-Ferguson

Names we disliked the least

• My girls are Emma and Sophie, simply because they are the only names we both liked and agreed on. I originally wanted 2 names starting with the same initial but we couldn’t agree on 2 names we liked with same initial so that was that lol. -Shirley Bradley

• My husband and I fought it out on the way to the hospital. They were our 5th and 6th girl. At that point, I was just coming up with names that I liked or didn’t hate and he shot them down or approved them. -Catherine RB

• I liked more classic names like Margaret and Caroline and my husband likes more 1990s trendy names like Britney and Hannah. We ended up with Sydney and Savannah which was really what we could live with on each other’s lists. -Shandra Locken

• Was the only 2 names we could come up with that we didn’t hate. -Shandra Lee Frame

• We had trouble with boy names. The only name we agreed on was Archer. I wasn’t sold on Archer, but I loved the nickname Archie, so we agreed on Archer. -anonymous

Google helps

• We knew my daughter was going to be named after my grandma, who was also a twin. My son was a bit tougher. Some Google searches helped. I was teaching at the time and was looking for something different. -Sarah Beth

• I Googled matching twin names.. found ones I liked and presented to my husband. I wanted something more unique than a traditional name. But he wanted nothing crazy! -Heather Lynne Eftink

• We did a lot of googling lol and I wanted one of the babies to have my fiancée middle name which is McKenzie and he always loved the name Kayn so we settled with Kayn McKenzie. I loved the name Elias and Tate (from American Horror Story) so we settled with Elias Tate. -Samantha Carter

Famous names

• Reality tv shows! -Shadley French Gonzales

• My husband and I were watching the new Top Gun Maverick and fell in love with the name Maverick! I picked out the second name, Carter! -Kaela Mohler

• Sons of Anarchy fans here so we have Abel & Jax -Jodie Finnegan

• My boy twins name we just came up with and both agreed on his middle name is a family name. Our girl twin was a little harder to pick and we heard it on a TV show and it stuck her middle name is also a family name. -Alyson Wahl Melson

• I love Gilmore girls, so Rorie was our first name chosen, I wanted the second name to have the same number of letters and have some type of similarity, so we went with Allie. Both 5 letters and both end in ie. -Bridgette Marie

• Jax and Jordy(these are not shortened, it’s what’s on their bc)…..we liked Jax from sons of anarchy and then discussed Jordan and I said we’re just gunna call him Jordy anyways so let’s go with Jordy like Jordy Nelson from the packers at the time. Middle names came from a grandfather on each side. -Angella Teran

• Loved the name Adaline from the movie The Age of Adaline with Blake Lively and always said if I had another girl I’d name her Adaline and Olivia after my grandpa who has passed, his name was Ollie. -Kylie Sartori

• Named after two presidents of Egypt. Anwar Sadat and Jamal Nasir

• Favorite actors at the time….Brendan and Kiefer. -Angela Raduenz

• We were watching a favorite show of ours one night, and they said the name of one of our favorite characters and we both were like oh that’s a good name! The other one we searched through a baby name book lol. Nolan and Bennett! -Debbie Grix

• One twin was our girls name from our first pregnancy that we just fell in love with Kasey Savannah. Our second twin came from our two favorite show characters. Meredith Olivia (greys anatomy and Law & Order SVU). -Kris Jonovich Krick

• Ever since the movie “Love Actually ‘ came out, I always wanted a girl named Aurelia. Luckily 15 years after that movie came out, it happened! -Margo Gough

• After my father-in-law, B after my husband watched Die Hard -Lindsey Larson

• We watched a lot of TV in the last months because moving around was hard so fell in love with some names. Lincoln and Beckett. -Jami Hollis

• Silas from the show Weeds and Lucia was the name of a co-worker I thought sounded pretty. -Andrea Savage Woods

• Lionel Roman is after two of my husband’s favorite soccer players and Alessandra Ophelia was just so beautiful to us. -Denise Felicé

• My partner picked them after watching the film Logan on the Kodi app on his fire stick -anonymous

• My oldest daughter was named after a horror movie character. And any other names I had picked out for my potential children were all horror movie character names… However, they were all singleton names…. So, I had to figure out 2 horror movie character names from the SAME movie that A: made sense and B: wasn’t too out there and/or ordinary! So, I settled on Ripley & Bishop (from Aliens). Ripley definitely fits her namesake! She is a bad ass! And Bishop, he’s just super chill and cool. -Kay Lynn

Need help with Boy/Girl names? No worries, check out Best Boy Girl Names to Help You Name Boy Girl Twins.

Let someone else decide

• Gave a list of names we liked to big brother and let him pick! -Kristie Whalley

• My husband and I chose one name and let my Autistic 11year old choose the other. He chose Niall and we chose Ollie. Job done. -Alison Shepherd Thackeray

• My husband and I let our dad pick out names. They gave us like 8 names each. From there we picked out the top 5 then top 3 then we picked out the names we wanted for our twins let me just say they were honored. -Fabiola Gomez Martinez

• I wanted both names to start with the same letter. I had 3 boy names that started with L, but couldn’t find 2 girl names that I liked that started with the same letter. I prayed for boys!! We had boys and I told my husband to pick 2 of the 3 names. We have Luke & Levi. -Sarah Oligmueller

• I picked a name I loved and wished I’d have used it for my elder son – Connor. And the 2nd twin our elder son picked- Zach. -Debby O’Sullivan

• We made a list and let our oldest (only child at the time) pick their names after they were born. She still brags about how she named her brothers. -Rachel Marlow Litton

Themes

• Very Bulgarian + Christian names. So, they are named after Two Bulgarian Khans. -Петя Йоцова

• We wanted Biblical names and always loved the names Joel and Gabriel. -Kara Ark Thomas

• We already had two kids whose names began with L, so we continued with the L theme. So now we have Leah, Logan, Landon and Lily. -Kerry Palmquist

• I wanted to name a little girl Iris, so when we found out we were having twin girls, we made them our flowers. Iris and Lily. -Jeff Harris

• I have four boys total. The older two are Elijah Matthew & Evander Marshall. So it was just keeping up with them lol. We settled on Eddison Malcolm & Ethaniel Marcus. They each have nicknames built in so it’s a win win for me. -Brittney Woods

• We decided middle names are smith & Wesson cuz daddy’s a hunter. Then a & b names for first names. -Holly Layton

• I already had boys whose names started with B and C (Brendan and Connor), so I chose A and D names (Aidan and Declan) to be like “bookends”. -Katie Blessman

• My animals already had plant names, so we stuck with that theme, and we didn’t want same beginning sounds or rhyme. Lily and Violet, -Sara Thompson

• We went through all kinds of name combos going through the alphabet, we wanted the first letter to be the same at the very least. It was actually fun going through all sorts of variations and even practicing saying their names as if they were in trouble! Haha. We landed on Braxtin/Braylin:) 11 years old now. Their father passed away about a year and half ago so it is a fun memory I have shared with them on how we spent months of yelling out different names before finding the perfect combo . -Kellie Stephens

• Indigo (Indie) and Isla. Names I’ve loved for a long time. Big sister Ivie-May. -Abigail Rebecca

• My late husband had a love for Harley Davidson Motorcycles so when we knew we were pregnant Harley was the name he wanted if we had a girl. We found out we were having twins and after the shock wore off and we knew it was 2 girls Karlee immediately came to my mind so we have a Harley and a Karlee. -Nikki Radcliffe

• We wanted them to go together but not be too matchy. Decided on Colton first and then Carson went with it. Middle names are after our grandfathers. -GeriBrett Fowler

• My oldest’s name is Logan and I knew I wanted my girls names to start with the same letter. From there I fell in love with Lyric and then Lyra just fit with it -Jasmine Brooks

400 Girl Twin Names, will give you even more names to choose from!

Family Names

• We knew we wanted our firstborn son to be Matthew David after my father and my husband. When we found out we were having twins, we agonized over finding a second name that we loved just as much. We settled on Thomas Christopher. Thomas because we loved it, bonus that it means “twin” and Christopher after his uncle. -Elizabeth Monsoor DePalma

• Family name for one of my twins and the other my husband named: Nattie and Maddie/Natalie and Madelyn -Tiffany Francois

• My twins are called after both their granddads – Mikey & John -Jennifer O’Keeffe

• My husband and son picked the first and middle names for one. The other has the first name of a distant relative that I always liked and the middle name of a dearly departed loved one. -LM BT

• Named after my dad and grandfather:) easy! -Adrienne Marie

• Named after their great-grandparents and great, great-grandparents. -Jason Bunn

• We went with names that honored our grandmothers since both twins were girls. Mia Rose ( Mary Rosalie but everyone called her Rosie) and Evelyn Grace ( Mary Evelyn). -Candice Osuna Lincoln

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• Me and my husband’s initial, M&C. So twin a’s gonna be MC and twin b’s CM  -Macie Labilles Marcial

• The name we discussed for baby A was a personal favorite of mine, and then when we realized the first and middle name were both of our godmothers, it was a done decision. Baby B was another name I always loved and hubby liked it too! -Laura Hintze Pelly

• My daughter, Jocelyn, is named for my late father, Joseph, and my child, Hayden, was named for my late mother, Haydee. -Kristen Marée Cleary

• Named after my grandfather who passed away when I was 10 and my partners grandfather. It made his grandmother so happy…she passed away 2 weeks after the twins arrived. -Ruth Elizabeth

• Named after people in our family who have passed away. So I needed certain initials and went with that. I needed an e and j. -Rebecca Rathman-Deckner

• My husband’s sister died at a young age so one of my girls is named after her. Since her name began with an L (like mine), I went looking for an M name (like his) and something that paired well with the other name. That’s how we got Lexie and Mackenzie . -Lauren VanBenCoten

• I have a boy and girl twins! I knew if I was having a boy I would name him after my dad that has passed! So I did that which his name is Timothy Lee and my daughter I really wanted the name Ava rose but her dad didn’t like that so we came up with a Hazel! -Ashlee Kemena

• Named after four grandfathers, Armand, and Julian for first names and Benjamin and Robert second names. -Chloe Viner Collins

• Lydia and Joslyn! Fun story….I loved the name Lydia and it blends both mother’s names and sounds together. Dee & Jana Lynn. Then I was going to rhyme with Julia for baby b. It didn’t feel right. So I let my husband 100% pick a name off of 20 list I wrote down and he only circled that one name. He also randomly searched a middle name and ironically her initials are JR and he is a Junior! So it stuck! Reflecting on his choice, her name also takes the sounds and letters of her grandmothers too. Lynn in Joslyn & her middle name is close to the other ones. -Robin Bowman

Sport Fans

• My husband is a big Ohio State fan – their colors are Scarlet & Gray – was an easy choice. –Kristin Gabriel

• We had a boy and girl name picked out for our first pregnancy and we had a girl. So we decided if we ever had a boy, we would use that boy name- Luca. Fast forward three years and we found out we were having twins for our second pregnancy. At 22 weeks we found out we were having two boys. So my husband ran around announcing names like he was in a sports stadium (he’s European and loves soccer). He decided Luca was a solid athlete name for baby A and Nico was just as sporty for baby B. So we have our full term big twin boys Luca and Nico, our hearts are absolutely full now! -Marissa Meyer

Find even more twin boy name inspiration with Twin Boys Names To Help You Name Boy Twins.

Sometimes, you have to be creative

• Einy miny minny moe. -Chelsey Baker

• My husband and I used an app that worked like Tinder. It was interesting discovering the names we liked and didn’t like. -Stacy Mullen

• I thought about something that would connect them not only spiritually but physically as well. Amethyst and Luna. Amethyst is a crystal and crystals are charged by the moon (Luna). We decided on who would get the name based on what they were like in the womb, Amethyst was always hiding (like a crystal in the earth) and Luna was always happy to show herself like the moon -Skye Angela Davis

• We put a poster board on the wall and wrote all the names we liked, then said them aloud and crossed off the ones we didn’t want. Had girl names picked out immediately but had boys! Decided on their names 2 days before they were born . -Jennifer Paul McCall

• After having three girls, I figured there wasn’t a Chance in hell that we’d have a boy. And the second one? Chase, because he’d be chasing Chance. Chance & Chase. -Dan Truskey

• I learned in high school that Electra means the color of amber, so since my name is a variant, hers is, too. Elettra’s twin brother Sean is named for my late brother. -Ambre Carrier

• We live in France but I’m British so we wanted bilingual names spelt identically in English and French. So we chose the names Arthur and Thomas which suit our boys, and both our families , perfectly -Rachael Sutton

• Tiktok. -Tyquesha Taylor

• Names that are easy to yell! . -Claire Rourke

• Lilyann. I dreamt about it and it stuck but middle name became Marie, my moms middle name, plus a combo of Ann and Marie was my hubbys grandma. And Grayson, he is my reminder that this world is not black and white, the beauty is found in the gray -Stefanie Fragale Acernese

• I work in HR and wanted their names to be spelled normally and not be hard to pronounce. After years of reading resumes and struggling with some creative names, I didn’t want my kids to have to correct people on their first interactions. We also didn’t want their names to be super common, so we scoured the SSN baby name database and didn’t pick names in the top 100. We easily agreed on our son’s name, Grant, but struggled a little more with our daughter before landing on Maria… we just kept throwing out suggestions until we both agreed. Middle names are family names. -Jessica K Wilson

• I have No idea where I got my girls names from, I thought for sure I was going to have boys or girl/boy so I never thought of g/g. I ended up naming them Violet and Lily.  I found out two years after that they were conceived in May the month of lilies and born in February the month of violets. How strange is that? It still blows my mind. They’ll be six next week! -Jaime Bower

• We chose Amelia Grace for a girl if we were having a singleton so we just called one Amelia and the other Grace instead. No actual thought process . -Laura Laycock

• We couldn’t agree on anything!! We knew we want different first letters and different from our older boys. We honestly didn’t decide on their names until the day we were leaving the hospital. -Jaclyn O’Shaughnessy

• We chose my husband’s boss’s last name for one. They called him by his last name and I thought it was different. My husband had a dream he was at the back door calling out the second name. I loved it and it matched the first. Coleson & Trillion. -Jaime Cassese

When it comes to choosing names for twins, it’s a balancing act. One that requires a mix of creativity, compromise and a little side of Google. Whether you opt for matchy-matchy names, family names or a completely unique name, embrace the challenge and remember, when they are 18 years old they can change their names to whatever they want.

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