One of our favorite baby name blogs is Nancy’s Baby Names, written by Nancy C. Man, which is where we found this wonderful piece on baby name patterns and sibling names.

Humans love patterns. Just look last year’s list of popular twin names:

Eight pairs start with the same letter. Seven have the same rhythm. Another seven end with the same letter (and many of these nearly rhyme).

For twins and other multiples, name patterns are easy. You know the number of children and their genders ahead of time. But what if you want a name pattern for an entire sibling set? That can make things tricky. You don’t know how many children you’ll have, or what their genders will be. You also don’t know how your tastes may change over time.

If you’re thinking about a name pattern to cover all of your kids, here are three pieces of advice to consider before you begin:

Don’t lock yourself into something limiting.
Let’s say you like flowers. You have a daughter and you name her Lily. You have another daughter and name her Rose. Then another, Jasmine. And then a fourth, but…you don’t like any other flower names. Iris? Too old. Poppy? Too young. Zinnia? Too weird. Amaryllis will never be spelled correctly. And Daisy is the golden retriever down the street.

Or, let’s say you have a son named Alexander. Then you have another boy, and you decide to name him Xavier so they both have that X in common. Then baby #3–a little girl–comes along. Well, you can’t do Alexis–that’s too close to Alexander. You won’t go near Maxine because you fear maxi pad jokes. Roxanne reminds you too much of that song. Xena reminds you too much of that show. And Beatrix makes you think of rabbits.

When you play chess, you have to think ahead several moves. Look at sibling name patterns the same way. Think ahead as many kids as possible. If you can think of 10 or more usable names that fit the pattern, it’s probably a safe pattern. If you can’t, the pattern may be too limiting to be sustainable.

Consider the pros and cons of visibility.
Have you heard of the Duggars? They have nearly 20 kids, and all of those kids have a J-name. This type of name pattern is one of the easiest to spot. (Especially in large families.)

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We wrote this week in our new column in the online edition of UsMagazine about Max and Emme, the names of JLo and Marc Anthony’s twins.

Max and Emme, who turned two on Monday, may not have the most original names on the block, but they’re compatible and make a fine twin set.

Funny that the most popular twin names in the U.S. are still what we’d call too matchy-matchy, with the same first initial and separated by only a letter or two: Taylor and Tyler, for example, or Ethan and Evan.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to give your twins names that seemed as if they came from different planets.  A pair like Kaylee and Eleanor sound like a cheerleader and a valedictorian, while Theodore and Logan might have been born centuries rather than mere minutes apart.

Since choosing twin names is among the most baffling tasks for parents, and present one of the most fun challenges on our message boards, we thought we’d make this the topic of our next group-produced blog.

What’s the best set of twin names you’ve ever heard — or that you can dream of — and what’s so great about it?

And what’s the worst?  Over to you….

This blog is adapted from our most recent book, Beyond Ava & Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby

Twins offer a rare opportunity for parents to choose two related names at the same time, but also multiply the potential difficulties of sibling naming.  With twins, it can be more tempting to use rhyme, sound play, and same initial names, but in our opinion pairings like Eddie and Teddy, Faith and Charity, or Nicholas and Nicole should be relegated to a time capsule.

While same-initial names that are clearly distinct from each other – Garrett and Grace, say, or Susannah and Simone – are okay, different-initial names are consistent in style and tone are preferable.

Some celebrity examples that work: Brad and Angelia’s Knox and Vivienne, Julia Roberts’ Phinnaeus and Hazel, Patrick Dempsey’s Sullivan and Darby, and Marcia Cross’s Eden and Savannah.  Although each of these sets of names is very different in style and feel, they all embody the qualities that matter most in twin names.  Each name in the set is distinct from the other yet they make a harmonious pair – exactly what most parents would wish for the twins themselves.

Gender compatibility may be more important for twins than it is for siblings.  One pair of starbaby twins whose names don’t quite work as well as they should: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Jessie James and D’Lila Star.  Both are girls, yet Jessie’s name seems thoroughly boyish while D’Lila’s is feminine to the point of frilly.  Melissa Ethridge’s twins are Johnnie and Miller – but unless you know their middle names, you wouldn’t guess that Johnnie is a girl, Miller a boy.  Such gender confusion seems needless, well, confusing. (more…)

Lookydaddy.com’s Brian Sargent, today’s guest blogger, is the stay-at-home dad of now-four-year-old twin girls and a third-grader.  Those are his daughters, below.

My wife and I knew it would be tough to name twin girls, so we assigned ourselves jobs. My wife’s job was to suggest possible names for consideration. My job was to say I didn’t like them.

Not to be immodest, but I did my job well.

“Rebecca.”

“No.”

“Jocelyn.”

“No.”

“Hester.”

“You’re not even trying, anymore, are you?”

I did my job so well that toward the end of my wife’s pregnancy, I began to fear for my life.  With each passing week, in an attempt to sleep comfortably, my wife had stacked foam pads, sleeping bags, pillows, and even an air mattress on her side of our marital bed, and as the twins’ due date approached, I knew that all she would have to do was roll over in the middle of the night to literally crush the baby-name objections right out of me.

I kid, of course. My wife could have never rolled over without my help.

Finally, exasperated with the selfless way in which I saved my children from names that belonged to my ex-students or had too many Ys, this is what my wife did: She wrote down a list of her ten favorite names, posted it on the refrigerator, and informed me none of the names could be removed from the list unless they were replaced with better ones.

So there they stood: Ten names. Who knows where they came from? Some I recognized as my wife’s coworkers. Some may have been from TV shows. And some were there simply to make me wonder why I had ever thought my wife and I had enough in common to successfully raise a child together. And, unless I could come up with better, two of them would become my twin girls.

I never came up with better. The two girls currently pulling on my arms as I type, giving my spellchecker a run for its money, bear names that came from that list of ten. And you know what? It’s fine. In fact, it’s more than fine. When I look back on it, I’m not sure why I was such a jerk about the whole name-choosing process in the first place. My girls, my beautiful, wonderful Lila and Victoria, are beautiful and wonderful no matter what we call them. And besides, they turned out to be identical, so it’s not like we use their names anyway.  Beats us who is who.

But, happily, neither of them are is Hester.

The recent spate of celebrities having twins (they’re not really just like us, are they?) got me thinking about twin names.  Although the Social Security list of most popular twin names would have you think differently, cutesy pairs like Merry and Joy or Tim and Tom are out.  So how can you find twin names that have a strong unifying element yet are distinct from each other, special in their own right?

One way: Search for names that carry a similar meaning, one that symbolizes something important to you or for your child, and then go on from that list to pick the two most compatible choices.  I love playing with nameberry’s search names by meaning feature, which you should discover for yourself if you haven’t already.  Clicking on any of the larger categories will take you to more specific name meanings: brilliant, for example, or red-haired.  From there you can go instantly to a list of names with twin meanings.

Playing this name game myself led to some surprising and wonderful choices for twins…and beyond.  Here, some great twin name ideas and their joint meaning.  Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, are you listening?

CLARISSA & LEONORA – bright

EWAN & SINEAD – gracious

ASHER & FELIX – happy

FEDERICA & MILO – peaceful

ESME & IMOGEN – beloved (this one is really perfect, I think)

AURELIA & FLAVIA – golden

ARABELLA & CALLISTA – beautiful

BLAKE & FINLEY – fair

JUDE & TAHILA – praise

ORLANDO & LASZLO or RODRIGO – famous

ALDEN or PALLAS & RAMONA – wise

CYRUS & SAMSON or KALINDI & SURYA – sun

CLANCY & KANE or LOUISE & WALTER or SASHA & OWEN — warrior

In case you’re Octomom, or just looking for a broader range of options, some meanings carry a range of compatible names that can be mixed and matched any number of ways.  For instance:

BECAN, KIERAN, GAVIN, LORCAN, REAGAN & RONAN – little

COLTON, DARCY, DELANEY, DONOVAN, LEILA, SULLIVAN – dark

ADA, ALICE, ARTHUR, FREYA, OBERON, SARI — noble

But you don’t need me to spell out the choices for you.  Check out our search names by meaning page and look up some great combinations yourself.  Note your best ones here – we’d love to hear them!

For even more information and a guide to popular and celebrity twin names, go to our twin names advice page.