Guest blogger Dionne Ford swore she’d never do what her parents did: give all her kids names starting with the same letter.  And then she discovered the up side of coming from a family with a unified name theme.

When I was a kid, I hated my name, not just because it rhymed with peon and my teachers couldn’t pronounce it, but because it made me an amorphous indistinguishable entity from my siblings. We are all Ds; Debra, Diana, Derick, Daniel and Dionne. And if that wasn’t enough, we have matching middle initials – Js for the oldest boy and girl, Ls for the rest of us.

Tongue-tied at almost every meal just asking one of us to pass the salt, my parents often resorted to addressing each of us by D. I grew up thinking my parents couldn’t remember my name.

I swore I’d never play such a cruel joke on my own kids.

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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.

Octomom aside, most of us only have the opportunity to name a small number of children. Authors, on the other hand, can name family after family–including the parents. Some–like Jane Austen–were limited by the restricted supply of names available in their milieu, while others could let their imaginations soar.

I thought it might be fun (and instructive?) to look at some of the more prominent brother and sister sets in literature for possible ideas–though you could probably skip Wallstreet Panic.

SISTERS

Alcott, Little Woman

JOSEPHINE, MEG, BETH, AMY

Austen, Pride and Prejudice

JANE, ELIZABETH, MARY, CATHARINE (KITTY), LYDIA

Austen, Sense and Sensibility

ELINOR, MARIANNE, MARGARET

Chekhov, Three Sisters

OLGA, MASHA, IRINA

Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

CHARITY, MERCY (known as Cherry and Merry)

Eliot, Middlemarch

CELIA, DOROTHEA

Lawrence, The Rainbow, Women in Love

URSULA, GUDRUN

Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

SCARLETT (Katie Scarlett), SUELLEN (Susan Elinor), CARREEN (Caroline Irene)

Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

STELLA, BLANCHE

Woody Allen, Hannah & Her Sisters

LEE, HANNAH, HOLLY

BROTHERS

Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle

MOSES, COVERLY

Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

DMITRI (MITYA), IVAN, ALYOSHA

Dumas, The Corsican Brothers

LUCIEN, LOUIS

Faulkner, several novels

BILBO, VARDAMAN, CLARENCE, ST. ELMO, MONTGOMERY WARD

WALLSTREET PANIC, ADMIRAL DEWEY

VIRGIL, BYRON

Miller, Death of a Salesman

BIFF, HAPPY

O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms

EBEN, PETER, SIMEON

Shepard, Fool for Love

LEE, AUSTIN

Steinbeck, East of Eden

CALEB, ARON

MIXTURES

Barrie, Peter Pan

WENDY (invented), MICHAEL, JOHN

Dickens, A Christmas Carol

MARTHA, BELINDA, PETER, TIM

Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

CASH, DARL, JEWEL, DEWEY DELL, VARDAMAN

BENJAMIN, JASON, QUENTIN, CANDACE (Caddy)

Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

JOLYON (Jolly), IRENESOAMES, WINIFRED

Hardy, The Return of the Native

CLEMENT (Clym), THOMASIN

Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

CLIFFORD, HEPZIBAH

James, The Turn of the Screw

FLORA, MILES

Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

JEREMY (Jem), JEAN LOUISE (Scout)

Salinger, Franny and Zooey and short stories

FRANNY (Frances), ZOOEY (Zachary), BUDDY (Webb), SEYMOUR, BEATRICE (Boo-Boo), WALTER, WAKER

Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

HOLDEN, PHOEBE, VIOLA, (Allie Vincent –siblings mentioned in other stories)

Shaw, Man and Superman

OCTAVIUS, VIOLET

Sidney, Five Little Peppers

BEN (Ebenezer), POLLY (Mary), JOEL, DAVID, PHRONSIE (Sophronia)

Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

TOM, ROSE OF SHARON, AL, NOAH, RUTHIE, WINFIELD

Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

SEBASTIAN, JULIA, CORDELIA

I had my three children over 11 years, and of all the disadvantages of spreading your kids that far apart, one of the biggest is that the older kids will insist on having a say in their baby brother or sister’s name.

When we found out our youngest child would be a boy, my husband and I were delighted that we had a name all ready for him: Edward, to be called Ned.  That had been our second-choice name for our older son, whom I insisted on naming Joseph after my dad.  But my husband and I both loved Edward and Ned, and we were thrilled and relieved to be set with our name.

Not so fast, said our older children.  Any kid named Ned, they claimed, would be sure to be called Nerd in the playground.  They weren’t too fond of the name either.  In fact, they said, if we named him Ned, they already knew they weren’t going to like him.

Sigh.  We couldn’t very well give the baby a name his older siblings hated, so we went back to the drawing board.  Luckily, my husband and I quickly found another name we both loved: Harry.

Even Harry Potter couldn’t sell our kids on that name.  No, they said.  If Ned was a nerd, Harry was “hairy.”

Well, we asked, what did they think we should name the baby?  Our son Joe, who was three at the time, loved the name Jim — but as a name book author I thought I would never to be able to tell interviewers I’d named my own sons the oh-so-plain pair of Jim and Joe.  That was like being a fashion editor and dressing in head-to-toe Gap.   Joe’s next best idea: Rainbow Boy.

All I remember after that was holding my newborn son in my arms in the hospital, the other children at my bedside, still debating his name.  Finally we came up with Owen, my grandfather’s middle name and one that we all at least agreed on.  My husband and I hated giving up the names Ned and Harry.  But as difficult as it can be to arrive at a name two of you love, it can be almost impossible to please four people.

Did any of you have older children who had strong opinions about the baby’s name?  How did you consider their ideas and did you end up taking their advice?  We’d love to hear!