'Twas Ever Thus: Twin Names

The following article from the Edinburgh Evening News was published on Saturday 17 February 1883 and focuses on quirks of naming twins. The idea of themes for twin names is definitely nothing new!

 

NAMES OF TWINS    Twins or triple births supply opportunities for the selection of unusual names. Some of these are pretty. Twin girls were lately registered Pearl and Ruby at Wantage, and others near Cranleigh, Sussex, Lily and Rose.  In 1878 a labourer at Robertsbridge, in the same county, presented with three daughters at a birth, called them Faith, Hope and Charity ; and a farm labourer near Bridport recently gave the names of Faith and Hope to twin sons. But sometimes dual births render parents positively cruel in their choice of appellations. We have known the name Huz and Buz applied to twin boys. Peter the Great Wright and William the Conqueror Wright figure in registrations as twins.     Another fancy created by two-fold births is that of furnishing the children with identical names transposed. Twin sons of a gardener at Chard were a few months since endowed respectively with the names James Reginald and Reginald James and at Ixworth, Suffolk, not long ago, died Horace Horatio, whose brother Horatio Horace attested the death entry.     A historian of parish registers remarks that about the sixteenth century it was not unusual for parents to give the same name to two or more of their children, with the view, perhaps, of increasing the likelihood of its perpetuation in their families. He cites, by way of proof, the following quotation from the will of one John Parnell de Gyrton : -- "8 Mar, 1544, Alice my wife and Old John my son to occupy my farm together till olde John marries, and then She to have the land and cattle. Young John my son shall have Brenlay's land plowed and sowed at Old John's cost."     Places occasionally give their names to children as in the cases Matilda Australasia Yarra Yarra Holden, Odessa Silly, &c. It may be supposed that in these instances there is usually some family connection with the locality at the time birth.                                                     Edinburgh Evening News                                                       17 February 1883

.